Jesse Harrington Au is the Chief Maker Advocate at Autodesk Inc. He is also a designer, maker and educator. Au works with the award winning consumer products team there to arouse the creativity in us all. Au provides technical support both internally and externally to Makers, Fashion Designers, Product Startups and Fine Artist. This consists of Au designing and implementing Autodesk's physical and digital story telling presence at major events such as Maker Faire, CES and SXSW. With these efforts Autodesk's reputation has gone from being merely a professional solution, to that of leader of the maker and 3D printing movement. Over the years he has been able to assist with such products and projects as Square (yes that one), Oru Kayak, Open ROV, Autodesk Pop Up Gallery and 100's more.
This Fall 2015 Au will have his first book publication Learning 3D CAD with Autodesk's 123D published by Maker Media, available on Amazon. A starter's guide to creating using Autodesk's 123D Design, this guide will take new users into account and will give basic knowledge of CAD, CAD language, CAM and other digital rapid prototyping methods. Au is also co-founder and host of the internet podcast Safety Third.
Prior to working as Program Manager, Au was the Maker Advocate at Autodesk Inc. where he designed and implemented the Autodesk relationship within TechShop and the maker market, includes writing curriculum, being a solutions expert, utilizing TechShop to create new projects and experiences for Autodesk; and defining the Autodesk presence at Maker Faire and other maker-related events nationally and internationally. This includes a first-time-ever European Edition of Maker Faire in Rome, Italy October 2013.
Before joining Autodesk as Maker Advocate, Au worked as Industrial Designer at MKE in Silicone Valley. There he designed products for market and manufacturing, including products for Tangoes, Blue Angel Vodka, Rex Games and Maurice Kanbar inc. He concurrently served as Exhibit Design Technician on-call at the famed 21st century San Francisco learning laboratory, the Exploritorium.
Prior to moving to California, Au worked as co-founder and partner of a design consultancy whose clients included: the San Francisco Exploratorium, Base Camp Design, Kink BMX, Resident Evil Studios, Rochester Museum and Science Center, Mathalete (as seen on NBC's Shark Tank) and Catapult Design. He taught concurrently as graduate instructor in the Industrial Design department at Rochester Institute of Technology. This included courses: Graphic Visualization; CAD Applications II (consisting of Solidworks, Sketch-up and Rhino); ID Sketching (developed by Au); and Hybrid Sketching (also developed by Au). He also co-taught Furniture Design with Wendell Castle, famed American furniture artist and a leading figure in American craft. In 2009, Au won a design fellowship to travel as guest lecturer to the Power on Demand Workshop at the American University of Kosovo. There he gave a workshop that facilitated undergraduate students from different European countries creating bicycle-generators utilizing a set of pictorial instructions created to be used world-wide.
Jesse Harrington Au was born in May of 1981, in a small town in upstate New York. He holds a BFA in Illustration and an MFA in Industrial Design from Rochester Institute of Technology, where his learning emphasis was on personal manufacturing, design and maker education, and the philosophy of design and aesthetics.