Jeff's Tool Shed

Ahh, Tuesday…

The day started off with a 20 oz mocha. No breakfast as I had to attend a vendor partner meeting. I was introduced to the attendees so that, when I hit them up for demos, they’d know who I was. It worked out well later in the day…more about that a few paragraphs down.

The general session was good. Jeff Ray talked about the education initiative taking place in Norway. The country has purchased 30,000 seats of the student edition to help get the kids interested in math. They’re also hoping that it will foster an interest in engineering. Apparently, Norway is short on engineers.

He then introduced Rwanda’s Minister of Science, Professor Murenzi. Dr. Murenzi spoke about his country’s "One Laptop per Child Initiative". SolidWorks’ involvement has grown over the years to helping support their manufacturing challenges, showing them how to be able to consistently produce quality.

Next, it was time for "The Woz", Steve Wozniak. I had to leave for a while at this point to go to a quick meeting. Upon my return, Mr. Wozniak was still speaking, and was at the point of describing how Apple became a company. While I’m sure there were many around me who found him interesting, I didn’t. It’s nothing against Mr. Wozniak, I simply am not enough of a techno-geek I guess.

Off to my first session of the day, 90 Tips and Tricks in 90 Minutes by Adam Smith of Product Creation Studios. Some of you have probably heard of, and/or seen, Adam. He’s been a mainstay in the SolidWorks Community for many years. I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Adam for a number of years as he used to work for my VAR. Anyway, Adam’s presentation was, as usual, entertaining and informative. While he didn’t quite get to all 90 tips in the 90 minutes, he did get through most of them. For every one that I already knew, there were three I didn’t. Just when you think you know everything, along comes someone like Adam…

After lunch, I went to a hands-on session for Electrical Routing by Avelino Rochino of SolidWorks. Excellent presentation! I’ll be able to put what I learned to use immediately.

I also attended a break-out session on Toolbox and how to configure it. Again, I’ll be able to put stuff to use immediately. I figured I didn’t have ours set up quite right…I’ll fix that upon my return to work on Thursday…well, maybe Friday.

Last night, I had the honor of going to the press dinner put on by SolidWorks. Earlier in the day I had met Rachel Dalton-Taggart. It was a pleasure meeting her as I’ve just started reading her blog, PR, Marketing and the Business of CAD, and she’s a great person to talk to. We talked for just a bit, but I must have said something right as she mentioned me, and Anna Wood, in her blog today. I’ve made the big time now! She does mention something about writing more about the press dinner, so hopefully she doesn’t recant what she said about me.

I’m tempted to say something inflammatory here about someone at my table who made some sideways comments about bloggers, but I’m not going to sink to that level. People are entitled to their own opinions, as assinine as they may be.

I did have the pleasure of meeting Tony Lockwood, Editorial Director of Desktop Engineering. I’ve been reading his blurbs that come in my email for a while now, and it was truly a pleasure. I wish I had had more time to converse with him. That being said, I’m sure I would have ended up making a fool of myself, so perhaps it’s a good thing that I didn’t…

Since being here, I’ve seen what SW 2008 is going to look like and I also know where SWW ‘08 is going to be held. While one will be announced tomorrow for the world to know, you’ll have to wait until the beta version of ‘08 comes out to see what I’ve seen.

Below are just a couple of pictures from today:

Steve Wozniak

Jeff Ray and Dr. Morenzi

It looks like I’ll be getting to test drive a scanner from NextEngine. While I don’t know how soon I’ll see it, I’ve been wanting to get my hands on one since last year’s SWW. I believe, too, that I’ll be able to test drive some stuff from HP, Adobe and some CAM software in the near future as well. I’m looking forward to it all and anything else that comes my way.

Stay tuned…

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