Greetings from Connecticut

So my wife, daughters (Madeleine, 3, and Phaedra, 1), and I just drove from Minnesota to Connecticut in about 72 hours. We’re now relaxing at my parents house in Connecticut for a few days before heading on to Boston. We’ll then be in Boston for the next 3 months before returning home to St. Paul, Minnesota. Expect more details on all that to be sprinkled into this summer’s blog posts.

My Parents’ house has Wireless Internet now

Sometime since my last visit to the house I grew up in, my mom got a tablet computer. Let’s not talk about how long it’s been since that last visit. Watching her play Words with Friends, check Facebook, and learn how to check e-books out of the local library with the expert help of my wonderful wife, my mind of course wanders to ArchiCAD. Specifically teaching ArchiCAD.

Teaching ArchiCAD has been on my mind recently because I just spent 5 afternoons over the past two weeks getting a Minneapolis firm up and running with their first seat of ArchiCAD. Yes that means instead of packing and preparing for 3 months away from home, I was blogging and teaching ArchiCAD. I was pleased that a lot of the answers to my students’ questions were “I did a video of that” or “Eric Bobrow has this video you need to watch“; being able to direct new users to videos saves me a lot of time. I’d rather focus training and mentoring sessions on connecting the new users to ArchiCAD. I want to help them fall in love with a new way of working and leave as much as possible of the ‘how to’ stuff to great videos, books, and other resources out there.

ArchiCAD for AutoCAD Users on the Amazon Kindle

A few years ago Scott MacKenzie and Simon Gilbert wrote a great book for people transitioning from AutoCAD to ArchiCAD. Recently they updated it for ArchiCAD 15, which is great for beginners, people interested in ArchiCAD, and our community in general. We need more ArchiCAD resources like their book. But what’s even more awesome is that it’s now available as an e-book. Here’s some links: ArchiCAD for AutoCAD Users (US) and ArchiCAD for AutoCAD Users (INT). If you don’t have a kindle, don’t despair. There are all sorts of ways to read Kindle books on laptops and other non-kindle devices. Just Google it.

E-books are good and all, but what I really love is the price: $9.99. Before you accuse me of getting overly promotional… I think that’s a great price for a book like this. Everyone can be skiddish about risking money on skill improvement. (no comment, more on that later, etc.) But $10 doesn’t even qualify as a risk. New to ArchiCAD? Want a refresher on the basics? Give it a shot. I’m sure you can find your money’s worth before you even have time to decide whether or not you like the book.

When I find the time this year (or next?) to write the ArchiCAD book I’ve been planning since starting the blog, it’ll be an economically priced e-book. And once that’s settled, I’ll look into a print-on-demand version. But e-book comes first.

Yes price isn’t everything, but it is something.
And sometimes a big something for people and firms watching every penny.