{"id":894,"date":"2009-02-20T14:38:13","date_gmt":"2009-02-20T19:38:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/example.org\/only-eleven-months-and-nn-days-until"},"modified":"2009-02-20T14:38:13","modified_gmt":"2009-02-20T19:38:13","slug":"only-eleven-months-and-nn-days-until","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/solidworksblog\/2009\/02\/only-eleven-months-and-nn-days-until.html","title":{"rendered":"Only 344 days days until\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>SolidWorks World 2010. But before we get going on next year,<br \/>\nlet\u2019s take a look at SWW 2009, held last week in Orlando. Some miscellaneous<br \/>\nthoughts and wanderings:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I was blown away by the attendance figures and energy. We<br \/>\nwere hoping for around 3,500 attendees in this tough market; we ended up with<br \/>\nover 4,300 participants. Thank you!<\/li>\n<li>This is indeed a tough market. Our venue just had a similarly-sized<br \/>\nevent (to be held by a TARP-funded bank) cancel with only a two-week notice.<br \/>\nPeople in the hospitality industry are hurting too.<\/li>\n<li>Many of the attendees pulled heroic efforts to get there.<br \/>\nYou told me about paying your own way when your employer refused (and in at<br \/>\nleast one case, shut down only days before the event) and even took personal<br \/>\nvacation time. We are all so inspired and humbled by your passion. This has a<br \/>\nhuge impact on every SolidWorks employee to work even harder to exceed your<br \/>\nexpectations, and you charged our batteries for the whole year.<\/li>\n<li>Sir Richard Branson is the Real Deal. After our presentation<br \/>\nin the general session we spent a few minutes together. All he wanted to talk<br \/>\nabout was an innovative incubator I had highlighted for use in third-world<br \/>\ncountries. An aside\u2013four million babies in the third world die in their first<br \/>\nyear of life, and half those deaths could be avoided with incubators. Sir<br \/>\nBranson looked me right in the eye and said &quot;I need to get those<br \/>\nincubators to Africa right now.\u201d He is absolutely obsessed with leaving this<br \/>\nworld in better shape than when he arrived. I believe he\u2019ll do it. Oh, and he<br \/>\nalso looked out on the sea of faces and questioned, \u201cWhy aren\u2019t there more<br \/>\nfemale engineers?\u201d Why, indeed.<\/li>\n<li>Engineers can be rock stars to the next generation. Mike<br \/>\nNorth and Joe Grand from The Discovery Channel\u2019s \u201cPrototype This\u201d were onstage<br \/>\nWednesday\u2013you should have seen the look in the eyes of the students from local<br \/>\nOviedo High School in the front row as they saw that design is cool\u2013and fun.<br \/>\nThey were drooling over the car\/plane from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.terrafugia.com\/\">Terrafugia<\/a>,<br \/>\ntoo.<\/li>\n<li>Don\u2019t tell anyone \u2013 it\u2019s a secret \u2013 but a key reason for the<br \/>\ncommitment you have to SolidWorks comes from the value you get from the partners.<br \/>\nA record 100+ partners put on a great show of really cool technology to help<br \/>\npeople get their jobs done. The energy in the partner pavilion was electric.<br \/>\nAnd three-quarters have already signed up for next year.<\/li>\n<li>You shared some really cool products you\u2019ve designed.<br \/>\nLiterally every industry and country was represented. I got a kick out of<br \/>\ntalking with Denis Manning, the owner of the world speed record for motorcycles<br \/>\nat over 350 mph (563 kph). Two amazing breakthroughs\u2013first, he couldn\u2019t get a<br \/>\ntraditional OEM engine to deliver enough torque and horsepower in a small<br \/>\nenough package, so he designed and built his own from scratch with SolidWorks.<br \/>\nSecond really wild thing\u2013his inspiration for the shape of his bike came from a<br \/>\nsalmon. It turns out to be a very fast fish, so he just copied its shape and<br \/>\nblew away the old record. He\u2019s convinced he can do 400 mph (644 kph).<br \/>\n&#0160;That one will go in the Smithsonian.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Well, I could go on, but just one final thought: you really<br \/>\nare the owners of the SolidWorks products; our job is to be the caretakers and<br \/>\ndeliver on your needs. As Jon Hirschtick said in his speech, SolidWorks is<br \/>\nreally only starting. Believe it!<\/p>\n<p>Now, I need to&#0160; get started on that first draft of next<br \/>\nyear\u2019s opening speech\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>SolidWorks World 2010. But before we get going on next year, let\u2019s take a look at SWW 2009, held last week in Orlando. Some miscellaneous thoughts and wanderings: I was blown away by the attendance figures and energy. We were<\/p>\n... <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/solidworksblog\/2009\/02\/only-eleven-months-and-nn-days-until.html\">Continued<\/a>","protected":false},"author":93,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-solidworks-world"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/solidworksblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/solidworksblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/solidworksblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/solidworksblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/93"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/solidworksblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/solidworksblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/894\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/solidworksblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/solidworksblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/solidworksblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}