Meet the Automate Judge: Viki Sandor

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Today, we're introducing Viki Sandor, a leader in parametric and data-driven design and the judge for our Automate category. Learn how Viki's innovative application of Speckle propelled her own hackathon success and discover her insightful tips and inspiring career journey.

Viki Sandor: The Grasshopper Artist

Viki’s design journey started at the Vienna University of Applied Arts, where she had to adapt to the highly digital environment of designing quickly. In came Grasshopper, a tool to help her leverage her math knowledge since she was way better at “mathematics than drawing with a mouse,” Viki tells us.

Today, she is successfully walking the tightrope between the AEC academics and professional environment as a research engineer at AIT working on urban scenarios with various industry peers. Other times, she can be seen having “tons of fun” as a lecturer at Leopold-Franzens Universität in Innsbruck where she dives into artistic experiments about space and exciting co-designing with her students.

Data-driven Design: Viki Says To Get With The Program

Viki fell in love with data-driven and parametric design early on in her career, which resulted in making waves in the industry even with her master thesis ‘The Permanently Temporary’.

“Data must be popularised among architects, urban planners, and anyone within the industry who’s not yet there”, Viki states.

For that to happen, Sandor emphasises the importance of accessibility in new technologies and warns against "technofetishism", advocating for a balanced approach to tech adoption in the AEC sector.

Speckle’s Role in Viki’s Innovations

Viki appreciates how Speckle simplifies the integration of AEC tools, streamlining the tedious process of data exporting and importing. Her love for Speckle is backed by its ability to bridge gaps between different AEC tools effortlessly, allowing AEC professionals to preview and share their data effortlessly and without the usual monotonous work.

“Speckle already bridges the gap between the AEC tools, which is usually very nerve-wracking. This means you can preview and share your data exceptionally fast without this tedious work of exporting and importing files.”

Viki’s AEC Hackathon Win with Speckle

Viki's talent was on full display when she, alongside her hacking partner Keerthana Udaykumar, bagged a category win at the AEC Hackathon in Zurich in early 2024. Their project, the "Miro-Speckle impact assessment" hack, focused on the powerful integration of Speckle with Miro.

“When you have a design print, today it often happens on the Miro board. It’s where you sketch out your ideas but how often do you actually assess those ideas on the board?”

Their hack enabled designers to transform freehand sketches made on Miro into 3D models analysed and visualized through Speckle, all the while dealing with the assessment of embodied carbon. Talk about a seamless workflow from ideation to tangible visualization, and most importantly–it lets you immediately test your idea!

How to Win at Beyond The Speckleverse Hackathon?

Viki believes success in a hackathon stems from good preparation and productive ideation at the very start. She advises you not to spend the entire hackathon ideating but to come up with a preconceived concept.

"It’s not about brainstorming the whole weekend," she says, "but about making a pre-existing idea work."

She emphasizes that the idea must be demonstrable, urging participants to treat their presentations as performances rather than mere sales pitches, capturing the essence of their innovations authentically. Authenticity is a keyword to have in mind while presenting your Automate category hack, so let your unique approach shine in front of your artistic judge!

Your Tool For Victory: Speckle Automate

We recently launched Automate, redefining how work is done in the AEC sector and inspiring us to open the Automate hackathon category. Automate lets your workflows run automatically without waiting for someone to press a button. Whenever you publish a new version of your model to Speckle, it will run, reliably, so you can focus on what matters.

Only a few months after the launch, a team at the Barcelona AEC Tech 2024 had already won the Best Overall Hack prize with an idea powered by Automate and the creative use of our 3D viewer. Are you the next Automate winner? Only one way to find out!

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Amazing! But What Now?

Speckle Automate is here to streamline your creative process and new avenues for innovation and efficiency in project management. Viki is here to inspire you to push your creative limits, stand by your idea and test the possibilities of Speckle. Convinced to join? Register for the Beyond The Speckleverse Hackathon, and let's reshape the future of AEC together.