Best of 2013

As the year comes to a close, I want to take a moment to look back at all that's happened at Novedge in 2013.

Best Year Ever

Thank you for making 2013 our best year ever! This was only possible because of your support and feedback. We are building a community of artists, entrepreneurs, architects, engineers, in short, professionals devoted to creativity and design: thank you for being part of our community and for spreading the word about it.

Here are some of my favorite Novedge moments of 2013.

Double The Webinar Fun

Our Webinar Series went from a biweekly to a weekly appointment and received a redesign. Not only we created double the content, but more and more people registered and attended each episode. YouTube views also grew exponentially, thanks to all our partners and independent trainers who stepped up to the challenge and lead amazing presentations.

Here are this year's most watched Novedge Webinars:

Novedge Webinar #62: RealFlow 2013 – A Fluid Revolution

Novedge Webinar #87:A First Look at Chaos Group's New V-Ray 3.0 with Simeon Balabanov

Novedge Webinar #65: Discover ZBrush4R5 with Pixologic.  

On January 22nd we will  broadcast and record live our 100th episode featuring RealFlow, make sure to save the date for this landmark episode.

How to Succeed in Architecture

This year we started a monthly Google Hangout on Air Series: How to Succeed in Architecture. This has been one of my favorite initiatives at Novedge, as we get to chat with experts such as Evan Troxel, Mark R. LePage, Enoch Sears and many more. You can watch the entire series on our YouTube Channel.

Here's the most popular episode so far.

Blog Make Over

This year, we redesigned and revived our blog. I am blogging 3 times a week, sometimes more often, and our series of interviews with artists and innovators is a great way to discover new and interesting projects.

Here are our three most popular posts:

Interview with Juraj Talcik

Interview with Andrew van Leeuwen and Kevin Eckert, the minds behind BUILD LLC

Our Q&A with Chris Stringer following his webinar about Working with Shaders in Artlantis 4.1.

Happy Anniversary, Novedge!

2013 was also a year of milestones: on April 1st Novedge officially turned 10! To celebrate we hosted a party at our office and created a slideshare of fun facts about the company. Ken Wong wrote an excellent piece on the first 10 years of Novedge, check it out here.

For the First Time…

…We had a booth at Autodesk University! AU 2013 was so much fun, we can't wait to be back next year. A few lucky attendees who chose to wear our sticker won $100 in cash. See all the photos here.

And we hosted our first Holiday Party, complete with a "photo booth", which was almost more popular than the Prosecco and Panettone. Check out the photos here.

Achievements

In 2013 we made the list of the top-500 fastest-growing Ingram Micro SMB channel partners in the U.S. for the second year in a row and we also became a Platinum Status Bluebeam Partner (the highest level!).

Our online catalog of design software kept growing and we added more brands and products.

Giving Back

And last, but not least, we partnered up with Public Architecture to support their 1% program, which invites architecture and design firms nationwide to pledge a minimum of 1% of their time to pro bono service. We are donating $200 to Public Architecture for every new seat of AutoCAD 2014 we sell. As Our President, Franco Folini, mentioned in a recent blog interview, "each donation of $200 results in about $12,000 worth of pro bono design services out in the world."

This year we also loved supporting Flying Architecture's contest Architecture Unchained by donating a copy of Rhino. Franco Folini, Novedge's President, was one of the judges of the contest and he found it very hard to choose! The winner, Pablo Garcia, shared his work on our blog, go read his interview here.

We donated an educational license of Rhino and Solidworks to the Industrial Technology Competition Day held at Iowa Central Community College. 

And we sponsored and co organized an event in San Francisco on 3D Printing. The panel was moderated by our CEO, Cristiano Sacchi, and included Tatjana Dzambazova from Autodesk, Mark Hatch, co Founder of TechShop, Saul Griffith, co Founder of Instructables and Espen Sivers, CEO of Type A Machines.  

It Takes a Village

We didn't do this alone: it's only thanks to the support of our community that we could grow and thrive this year. I want to especially thank Jes Stafford and his Big Time Small Firm community on Google+ for welcoming us, Mark R. LePage, Neal Pann, Evan Troxel, Bob Borson and Enoch Searsfor inspiring us, and Angela Mazzi, Marica McKeel, Andrew van Leeuwen and Kevin Eckert for sharing their knowledge on our blog. 

I am sure I forgot some of you, I could write many more posts to list everyone who has made a difference. This my big Thank You to you.

Enjoy the holidays, I am looking forward to all we'll do together in 2014.