Would it surprise you to hear that the architects, engineers, and construction companies that build the world’s most amazing buildings can be luddites when it comes to using new tech?

Whether it’s using tech to solve problems, manage systems, create new possibilities, the AEC industry is famously conservative and tech averse. We’re in the middle of the most amazing period of human innovation, and much of how buildings get designed and built is the same as it was decades ago.  Why is this? There are a number of reasons; a legal environment where no large building is ever built without a lawsuit, bottom lines that do not have room to embrace new, unproven technology, a mindset of those leading AEC of ‘if I do not understand it, it cannot be good.’ Operational processes that still rely on paper. Yes, paper.

Many of us who live in the world of weekend hack-a-thons, building companies and products overnight, understanding the power of emerging tech and cloud collaboration are looking at the AEC industry and asking not only ‘Why has it not changed’?  But ‘Why not change it?’ A group of us that straddle the tech and AEC worlds got together to do just that. After years of seeing good ideas die, seeing projects run over budget and over time, we thought it was high time the AEC industry got hacked.

In November of 2013 we pulled together over 100 tech and AEC pioneers for the first AEC Hackathon. It was a fantastic success, and we’re doing it again on March 14-16^th.  AEC Hackathon 1.1! And what we saw last fall will be nothing compared to what’s coming.

The idea is to bring the intellectual vitality and ‘of course it can be done’ philosophy of the valley to the sober, mission-critical sensibility of the AEC industry, to solve problems, develop innovative solutions, both in hardware and software, and most of all, to bring the two worldviews together.

Our goal is simple: to change the way the builders build, designers design and managers manage our buildings, our cities, our world. Starting with simple problems, we’ve developed new insights, new solutions, and this March, we’re going to do it again.

Instead of committees and working groups, we structured this as a traditional hack, with teams competing for the best solutions to problems that matter to the AEC industry.  If we cannot convince the leaders of the industry to change, we will change it ourselves by example.

So who should attend?  Anyone who is looking to change what they already know is deficiency in the AEC industry, enterprise looking to find new opportunities and coders who are looking to apply their craft to a new problem landscape.

It’s time to build.