SolidWorks World 2013: Some day 1 photos
SolidWorks World 2013: Monday, Day 1 (my presentation oops)
There were a lot of exciting announcements at day 1 of SolidWorks World 2013. Two product announcements included My.SolidWorks.com (now in Beta) and the impending Mechanical Conceptual. These are already be very well covered by many other sources, so I’m not going into detail about them yet. If you would like more detail about these, the general session is viewable on SolidWorks Blog right now.
The surprize guests were Art Thompson & Jon Wells, engineers that worked on the Red Bull Srtatos jump. Every time I see that video of Felix Baumgartner jumping out of the capsule, I cringe. Thompson talked about project planning was several years to prepare.
My breakout session, Create “Super” Drawing Templates, didn’t go as planned. The power went out twice at the podium, (once at the start, and once while I was presenting). It is really hard to perform a software demonstration without power to your computer, projectors and microphone. I quickly recovered by turning the format into a question and answer advice and information session while the technicians worked to fix the problem. Eventually, I did get power back and continued the presentation. I was happy to have several attendees tell me later I did a great job adjusting to the abrupt interruption of my presentation. Even though I didn’t get to finish my presentation, I hope everyone left with enough information to find some benefit in what was shown.
SolidWorks World officially starts today (unofficially, two days ago)
SolidWorks World 2013 officially starts today. The General Session promises to be great. Yet, somehow, I’ve been busy since Saturday. That’s because there is a significant amount of interaction with customers before the official start. As mentioned by Matthew West on the SolidWorks Blog, the Product Definition and User Experience groups were conducting Alpha Testing for future releases. Even more interaction with customers occurs on Sunday. Some formal events occur on Sunday, like the CAD Managers Bootcamp. Some informal events like the Tweepup were also scheduled.
Now it’s Monday morning. Monday is usually a very busy day of the conference. I’m looking forward to the day. Last year, the experience of being employed by SolidWorks lead me to posting almost nothing during SolidWorks World. I hope to be able to buck that trend this year, and post at least a few times on SolidWorks Legion. If you are at the show, please pop by the Product Definition booth in the Northern Foyer. You can find me there this afternoon. Now, it’s time for me to go eat breakfast and prepare for the day! And, keep an eye out for tweets from everyone at #sww13.
SolidWorks World 2013 Flickr photos have started!
Every year since I don’t know when, SolidWorks World has established a group just for photos taken at the conference. The photo stream for SolidWorks World 2013 group has started! Check out the Flickr group and upload your own photos of the event. Here’s a short sample so far:
SolidWorks World 2013 countdown widget
Well, I’m discovering something new everyday. Someone has set up a SolidWorks World 2013 countdown widget. Looks like I’ll be using this tool for SolidWorks World 2014 countdown in a couple of weeks.
Meet the SolidWorks Product Definition Team at SolidWorks World 2013
SolidWorks has a team dedicated to finding out how SolidWorks products can be improved and expanded to suit the needs of existing and potential customers. This team is Product Definition. This is what I do at SolidWorks. We work hard to communicate with our customers via various means. We are the team that answers your Enhancement Requests submitted through your SolidWorks Customer Portal. We don’t take a break during SolidWorks World. In fact, this is one of our busiest times.
If you are attending SolidWorks World 2013, be sure to stop by our booth to talk to us about how we can improve SolidWorks products for you. If you want to talk about large assemblies, the new electrical product, costing, drawings, parts, features, missing functionality, etc, feel free to tell us. We utilize customer feedback to help decide how best to improve and expand SolidWorks products. Our booth will be in the Northern Foyer for the Hemispheres Ballroom at the Dolphin Hotel.