Even the CEO has to study for the CSWP test

One evening at SolidWorks World 2011 I was having a conversation with Matt Lorono, who manages the SolidWorks Legion blog. During our talk, Matt brought up the topic of certification, and asked if I had already earned my Certified SolidWorks Professional (CSWP) certification. I had to admit that I hadn’t, but promised Matt that I would have it by SolidWorks World 2012.

Early last month, I started working toward meeting that goal, and thought that some of you might be interested in following me through the process. So over the next few months, I plan to post occasional updates letting everyone know how things are going. First, some background.

While I haven’t used SolidWorks every day since I joined the team in 1997, I would guess that I’ve sat through approximately 1,000 customer demos and benchmarks in the past fourteen years, so I’m pretty familiar with our products. And I still remember (almost) everything I learned in engineering school, which I believe will help as well.

I’ve also found a great teacher—our very own Marie Planchard, who was a university professor before joining SolidWorks. Marie has been helping me understand the areas I’ll need to focus on as I study for the exam, and has been working with me to set milestones for my training efforts. Working with her has really helped me understand how valuable a great teacher can be, and why they’re so necessary. My 16-year-old son is also learning SolidWorks in high school, and it has been a lot of fun to work on my training exercises along with him, and share tips on occasion.

I’d also like to mention that I used this opportunity to experience the setup process in the same way as our customers. I installed and configured SolidWorks on my own, downloading directly from the SolidWorks customer portal. It took a little while to download the files, but the overall experience was very easy. I have to admit that I was impressed, so good job to the development team.

I plan to take the first segment of the CSWP exam soon, and I look forward to updating everyone on my progress. Wish me luck!