One applause prompter stat!!!
SolidWorks World 2010 kicked off this morning. It’s funny how many SolidWorks employees will not even acknowledge my existence, and how many will. Whatever. No one wants to hear about more SW vs ML angst.
The general session opened this morning, and I wasn’t taking notes. Maybe I should have been. Jeff Ray said that over 5000 people are registered. Wow. Last year was 4500+, I think. The session is held in an arena, with stadium seating. Much nicer than the usual everyone on the floor. That’s a lot of people. I’m not gonna speculate why so many people when the economy is obviously down. Maybe there will be some thoughts about that later in the week.
The first presentation of substance was Bernard Charles. (Excuse me, I almost wrote Bernard Hinault, the great champion of Tour de France). Anyway, Mr. Charles spoke about much of the same stuff he spoke about in Barcelona 1.5 years ago. The message is that SW and DS are close buddies, and the weird application of the word “Lovemark”. Does this mean something in French that it doesn’t mean in English? I guess its a play on the work Trade Mark, but we all love Dassault products, so it’s a Love Mark. <<KISS>>
Hmm. Next was Jeremy Luchini with a new SolidWorks Hot Rod (since McEleney escaped with the Cobra), which is a 34 Ford roadster with electric drive. Pretty bitchin’ looking. Pictures to follow.
Then Jeff Ray was back and showed some new stuff. They had a Mac on stage. And a Cintiq touch screen. And a netbook. The touch screen stuff is obvious, and welcome. The main thrust here is “in the cloud”. Frankly, the reaction from 5000 people could only be described as tepid. It was as if SW had forgotten the bikini girls flashing the APPLAUSE signs. I don’t think people were very impressed with the cloud-based visualization stuff. Some “direct modeling” demo (tugging parts in assembly, and in-context and other parts update as well) got more applause.
More later…
Maybe “lovemark” is Mr. Charles direct translation of “marque (or preuve) d’amour”. It means something like show of affection or proof of love or something. Difficult to say out of context.
I once listened to a video of Mr. Charles speaking in English. Worst accent I’ve ever listened to! And this comes from a French-canadian.
You know I was shocked to see cloud stuff reported.
I thought we ring barked that tall weed a while ago.
Even Jeff came out and said it was overhyped and now here it is headlining on day one of SWW. Does he believe it or not?
Perhaps Mr Charles’s accidently brings us a of death in his enthusiasm to make his mark.
How much resource has gone into that that should have been applied to bettering SW?
Don’t worry about the mixed reception. Keep being true to yourself and your readers. Just imagine if I was there. Probably be a public hanging
oops missed a word – a kiss of death in his enthusiasm..
Could it be that SWX has ran out of things to take up 4 days of an infomercial? I would like to attend one before I die just to see what the buzz is all about. Could it be that my CSWA is not good enough to afford me the honors of rubbing elbows with the hiarchy?
Sonic,
I think $$$$ will speak a little more clearly than a CSWA. There are a couple ways you can get free entry. You can become a user group leader, or a blogger. Or join a reseller.
I think SW overestimated how much people are thinking about stuff like this. If they want people to get excited about this, I think they have some education to do first. One thing they didn’t do very well from the stage was to make the point for cloud computing at its most basic level. They assumed this is an active issue for users. “cloud computing” is not on the top 10 list for anyone. I think this was a management miscalculation. If they want it to be an important issue for users, they have some education to do.
This summer I found some useful surfacing presentations (even though I was working with … Solid Edge) made at a few SW World events by a guy named Ed Eaton from the DiMonte Group. I think presentations like that could be somewhat worth going to SW World.
BTW I just bought the Surfacing Bible and the 2009 Bible from Amazon.ca today. Eagerly waiting to get them.
@matt
Yeah I think this is way off beam.
It seems to be coming from DS rather than SW.
On one hand we hear about how independant SW is and on the other DS are all over the SWW stage and I presume directing them to do this nonsense.
Some of the other ideas that have come out of DS are off too.
I mean who cares a sh** about uploading models to 3dvia? Why keep plugging it?
If SW users want to work via a cloud they would be demanding it.
I dont see/hear any demand and honestly it doesnt matter to me if one CAD company or another has something to crow about ahead of the other for the press or not.
I think it has more to do with rather grandiose corporate ambitions to create a mega brand for us to live inside and for them to make another dependancy to profit from.
Its also part of the me too thinking that is a distraction and poor substitute for the type of small scale focused innovation that users can really benefit from.
Maybe when you get 1 million+ users and 5000+ SWW attendees you lose sight of reality and begin to imagine not only clouds with silver linings but that you are doing God’s work…
If people arent excited then that probably means they know in their mind and gut they dont need it.
The silence at this announcement is probably more a measure of the civility and politeness of an audience of professionals than anything.
This is a fail in my book. I am annoyed they have diverted coders to work on it who could have been improving SW and fixing bugs.
@Neil
Yes, I believe that the directive to show this stuff in such an early stage came directly from DS. I also believe that it was in direct response to Autodesks Project Butterfly. Jeff Ray made the point that they don’t usually show pre-pre-pre-alpha stuff in public.