Our History

1997: AUGI puts the “I” in “International”

In order to be true to its new name, Donnia Tabor-Hanson and her administration worked on developing new international resources for the membership, not the least of which was this Website. Many efforts were made (and continue to be made) to add international resources to the website and encourage international user group events. SIGs were broadened into "Industry Groups" (IGs) to parallel Autodesk's changing internal structure, enabling AUGI to dedicate time and resources to specialized fields (consider how many specialized fields alone exist within the heading "AEC", for example) and gain financial support from Autodesk's vertical market groups. Publicity of the organization increased dramatically, and Autodesk employees seemed more informed than ever of AUGI's existence and purpose. David Bradford and his Marketing group at Autodesk were tremendously supportive of AUGI as it took on the massive goal of becoming a truly international organization.

The Annual General meeting that year was amazingly entertaining. Members of the Board worked very hard to provide those AUGI members who attended an open night of free rides and food at a major theme park, a week packed with highly technical information about the toughest/roughest version of AutoCAD ever created (Release 13), a wonderfully successful yo-yo competition and the largest annual general meeting ever staged. This was a year of more innovations including high discounts on the new Autodesk University Event (Autodesk Design World), the AUGI Gauge (a utility which could measure the performance of the latest Release of AutoCAD with prior releases) and events throughout the country as well as a restructuring of board meetings using conference calling to reduce costs. CADENCE author, Autodesk University faculty member, Autodesk Trainer and long time supporter of NAAUG/AUGI Lynn Allen also came onboard this year as the new Manager of User Group Services (yay!).

Several challenges did arise that year though including a political nightmare on the Board of Directors. For the first time ever the organization had to deal with dangerous misrepresentations on the account of certain individuals on the Board, and although most of the troubles eventually got ironed out, the fiasco forever changed the way Autodesk viewed the organization's potential to be dangerous if certain members on the board were not careful when representing them to the public. This was also the year of the "IntelliCAD incident."

The following Board of Directors were elected:

President: Don Spencer / Tangra Development
President-Elect: David Harrington / Walter P. Moore & Assoc.
Secretary: Donnia Tabor-Hanson / Designer's Alliance
Treasurer: Kevin Campbell / Pozzi Wood Windows
AEC IG Chair: Chris Hawkins / HOK Architects
Data Management IG Chair: Paul Martinez / Lockheed Martin
Mechanical IG Chair: Paul Jackson / Honeywell, Inc.
GIS IG Chair: Barry Owens / Sumter Electric Cooperative
Programming IG Chair: Scott McFarlane / Woolpert
Education & Training IG Chair: Charles Bell / Las Vegas CADD House
Multimedia SIG Chair: Emmanuel Garcia / Garcia & Garcia
Senior Autodesk Rep: Chris Barron / Autodesk
Manager User Group Services: Lynn Allen / Autodesk