The Finnish SolidWorks User Group has been around for a while, but only virtually. Markku Lehtola has actually been running his user group on line for the past two or three years. I spoke with him earlier this year and convinced him to invite his members to a "live" meeting. Markku was a little hesitant at first, explaining to me that its very hard to get the Finnish people to show up for a meeting. He was sort of right, only about 20 folks showed up last night. But they were an enthusiastic bunch, getting involved in the meeting rather quickly, and staying around until nearly 10:00pm to see three technical presentations. At the end of the meeting, most of them were asking about when the next one would be. Some of the attendees were also talking about convincing more of the "on-line" SolidWorks users to show up for it. Looks like Markku's group is going "live".
I sure enjoyed my time in Northern Europe visiting with SWERFA in Denmark and Markku's group in Finland. I'll spend the next few days here in Barcelona mingling with the press at the 2009 launch Event, and maybe get a chance to see some sights. Between meetings and airports, I really haven't seen much of the countries I've visited so far this week.
My luggage on the other hand gets to spend the next five or six hours in Paris.
Thank you, Richard for coming to spend your time and sharing your knowledge with us! Great work!
Posted by: TapaniS | September 17, 2008 at 03:17 PM
Hi again Richard. And huge thanks for visiting us in Finland! I think everyone involved agree that the best things were good presentations (I learned something new from every one of them) and the faces - it was soooo nice to see the people (at last).
br
Markku
Posted by: Markku Lehtola | September 18, 2008 at 04:21 AM