A series of professional training courses was launched in late October with a two-week session on AutoCAD for Haitian professionals and students in the design and construction industry. IT guru Kyle Miller, from the San Francisco office of Gensler, conducted the classes at the Rebuilding Center with the help of some dedicated laptops and copies of the AutoCAD Suite 2009 donated by Autodesk.

At least one local architect, Jean Rene Lafontan, stuck around for the whole two weeks. During a candid testimonial, Lafontain, between rooster crows, explains why he signed up. "AutoCAD is the most popular program here in Haiti," he reminds us. "I was interested because I heard it was someone from Gensler.... I wanted to see the standards of an [international] office."

The course was identified as an introduction, but delved into principles such as working with blocks, creating templates, annotation, annotative scales, layouts, output and publishing, external references and 3D basics.

Lafontan was also curious about Revit, and sees a tremendous advantage for more similar training sessions held at the Rebuilding Center. Our new friend Kyle may not have seen the last of Haiti!