Wow. I don’t know that I can say anything more intelligent than that. It’s been a pretty incredible day today. I woke up way too early to start with. How early? Starbucks wasn’t even open. I had to wait for that to happen.
Things started to pick up around 8:00 when we all started amassing for the stampede into the hall for today’s general session. It was while standing around that Alex Ruiz showed up wearing this absolutely awesome shirt: 
Jeff Ray opened the day, as he has for the past 7 years. This year, however, was his final one. As most know, Jeff is moving on up into Dassaut corporate and Bertrand Sicot is taking over as CEO of SolidWorks. Jeff talked about how SolidWorks was involved with the Chilean mine rescue. Schramm Incorporated drill rigs were used for both holes drilled, while the drill bits came from Center Rock. When the first drill bit broke, a new one was designed on site, in Chile, in three days. Pretty incredible stuff, there. Oh, remember how Oakley provided sunglasses to all the rescued miners? Yeah, designed in SolidWorks.
Bertrand spoke for a bit with the most important thing being his assuring all that SolidWorks would always be available as a local install. It would never be an either/or sort of thing with regards to the cloud.He made mention of how well Draftsight has taken off, with over 300,000 downloads and 66,o00 activations.
However, nothing Jeff or Bertrand said was as awe inspiring, or as captivating, as the next two speakers. Gene Kranz and Jim Lovell of Apollo 13. We’ve all heard the story and/or seen the movie, but to hear the story from two of the men who lived it was incredible. Up until Gene started speaking, Twitter was rolling with tweets with the #SWW11 tag on them. By the time Jim joined Gene onstage, the Twitter stream for SolidWorks World had all but dried up.
Those two are incredible men, reminders of a time gone by. When Gene spoke, you could just tell he was a no bullshit kind of guy. To think that the lives of the crew were saved by duct tape, a sock and a manual box is just mind blowing. Even though I kept picturing Tom Hanks, Jim’s recounting was mesmerizing. No PowerPoint for him, either; 3×5 cards were his only media. I really don’t think I can adequately express what it was like to be so close to two bona fide heroes. Wow doesn’t even come close.
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