Day two started early for me. Five-fricken-thirty in the morning early, and I don’t know why. Both mornings here I’ve woken up at 5:30 and, admittedly, that completely sucks. I’m getting off track though.
After a breakfast that consisted of a triple 20 ounce mocha from Starbucks, some cold French toast and cantaloupe, I made my way to the starting gate, er entrance, to the general assembly. For reasons beyond my comprehension, they have us wait about 100 yards away from the actual entrance to the hall. (The fact that there haven’t been any major injuries with 4,000 people rushing to get good seats is a small miracle.) Fielder Hiss started things off today talking about the Platinum Sponsors for SolidWorks World 2011, specifically HP. Honestly, it seemed a bit like a commercial interruption.
Up next was Richard Doyle. Frankly, I think it should be Sir Richard Doyle. The man is a knight of SolidWorks and should be recognized as such. As a matter of fact, from now on I believe people should refer to him as Sir Richard. Richard spoke a bit about the user groups and then presented the award for User Group of the Year to Chicago. Ed Gebo won User Group Leader of the Year. Richard then introduced Phil Sluder who was presenting the first annual Michelle Pillars SWUGN Community Award. Michelle was a founding member of SWUGN, a founder of the Seattle Area SolidWorks Power User Group and an advocate for SolidWorks and knowledge sharing. She passed away last year. This year’s recipient was Wayne Tiffany.
Fielder then introduced Jon Hirschtick. As he’s done in previous years, Jon brought up SolidWorks customers who were using SolidWorks for innovative products. First up was Dr. Bill Townsend of Barrett Technology. In addition to be SolidWorks’ very first customer, Barrett Technology is creating totally awesome robots designed to work in close proximity of Humans. Basically, if you get too close, it’s not going to accidently crush you like a bug. Using SolidWorks, they were also able to cut down the number of wires they needed from 100 to 4. That’s right, 96 fewer wires. Pretty impressive, wouldn’t you say? Oh, did I mention that the robot can also run for 20 minutes on 5 9-volt batteries? You’re impressed now. If not, you should check your pulse. The next customer was Mako Surgical. Using SolidWorks, reverse engineering and lots of smarts, the team at Mako have created an alternative to knee replacement. They even brought up an actual patient. This guy was walking TWO hours after surgery and playing golf 3 DAYS later. This was a guy who had such severe bone to bone contact in his knee that he was all but a permanent fixture on his couch and had ballooned up to 300 pounds. Knowing that I’m a candidate for knee replacement, this makes me feel much better about my future ability to move about.
Jon then brought up the Mike Pisani from Local Motors. If designing an open source car is something that interests you, you should check them out. Locally manufactured, open source designed cars. Each vehicle is a limited production run of 2000 that you, yes you, can build in just two weekends. Check them out at www.local-motors.com.
Last up were the guys from Bionic Builders, a new Discovery Channel show. What do you get when you cross an adrenaline junky amputee with an intelligent engineer susceptible to suggestion? Some crazy prosthetics for amputees, that’s what. Missing a leg but like to scuba? There’s an attachment for that. Specifically, a battery powered propeller. Rock climber? Yeah, they have an attachment for that, too. It even comes with a clip on the bottom so you can ride your mountain bike to that sheer rock wall you’re going to climb. Basketball player? They’re working on a leg that’ll help you with your vertical jump.
All in all, the product innovations shown today were impressive. Rather than your typical machine design, these guys were thinking outside the box, coming up with creative solutions for the curve balls that life sometimes throws your way. I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s session when we get to see what’s coming in 2012.
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