At Autodesk University on December 4 at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas, Carol Bartz delivered the keynote address to attendees. Directions Magazine captured the keynote and we have provided the salient text of her presentation below:

We continue to stay very energized at Autodesk…and I want to sincerely thank you for your business... This morning, what I want to give you an update on what I call “Digital Design Data revolution. You’re going to get sick of me saying it, in fact in the company, we like to call it D-cubed because it was too hard to say too many times…

So, I want to start by asking you a question. Do you actually know what happens to your design after it leaves you? The first answer is, of course you do. There are things you know for certain. First you know your design gets turned into a drawing print; and second it typically becomes somebody else’s problem downstream.

But you know as we look at this decade, there are three changes coming. That is that your design data, the data that you create, is not going to turn into print for a simple reason. And that is that there is no productive future for analog design data. Because analog data can’t do anything of real significance like improve time to market, or occupancy of a building, to improve customer satisfaction, or increase sales and service revenues.

The shape of the future looks like this: After that design data leaves your hands, it needs to stay in digital form. After all, you went through a ton of work to get that information in very precise digital form. And except for a very few special cases, analog/paper is going to be over by the end of this decade.

You data will be transformed into very practical, very usable digital information that will derive an entire lifecycle of the building, of the product, and the infrastructure services that are created.

The concept is ‘keep it digital.’ Because it is precise; because it holds much more information and can really be leveraged and used downstream. This is an enormous opportunity for all of us. And you’re going to be measured not just on the quality of that design, but on your ability to deliver high content, high value information across projects, across your company, out to your supply chain; out to your subcontractors; and throughout your enterprise wherever that might be. You’re going to become a key information resource for anybody that touches that design information. Phone, fax, or FEDEX isn’t the answer.

So it is going to be suppliers, purchasing people, contractors, facilities managers, shop floor people, fabricators, maintenance and repair people, you get the idea. Anybody…

I am talking about design-based data that can be used anytime, anyplace, in the field, in the office or across the ocean and for every kind of user.

Simply put, you’re at the beginning of a long of a vast enterprise of mission-critical information.