SW World 2006 Day 4 Afternoon and Event Wrap-Up

Well what can I say after such an awesome 4 days here in Vegas! Big thanks to Solidworks for the great event that was put on here. The technical presentations were top knotch, and the presenters were very knowledgeable. The offsite event was a lot of fun, and the morning sessions were outstanding.

The biggest thing I am comming away with after my first SW World, is how passionate the user community is. You can see it in the participation of the session attendees, and hear it in conversations at lunch, or while waiting for a session to begin. Very eveident also is the desire of the Solidworks Corporation to provide a product that is the best it can be. The passion for design that was discussed here, is very alive and well.

There arent enough words to encourage everyone that didnt make it, to try to go next year. They are already throwing around numbers of

4000-4500 for next year!!! Registration usually begins around august where you can get in for $695. When you think about the cost of training at a VAR, the $695 is a great deal.

I would also like to encourage everyone to visit the usergroup site

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These meeting are very informative, very informative, and most of them are free!! If there isnt one in your area, why not start one??

Like I said, its been a great 4 days here, and im already thinking about next years event. A couple of hints would be to arive the day before the event begins, and stay the night of the last day so you dont have to haul your luggage around with you. Also if your not to excited about going alone, there were plenty of us here this year. I can assure you that you will meet lots of people and make lots of new friends.

So thanks for the replies to my other posts, and thanks for letting me be your inside source for all the happeneings here. I think next year I might even just get a normal blog site so I can post some pics and stuff.

I look forward to meeting more of you guys in New Orleans next year, and I look forward to a great year of sharing information here in the newsgroup!

Elvis Has Left The Building.............

It's not too surprising. After all you're seeing about 1% of the users and there's a pretty good chance that you're seeing people from the top few %. Same thing with this news group. You guys are the top of the pyramid!

Since three of us went this year and since I had been to SWW2000, I took the third choice on the sessions. I still found lots of great presentations. You can't lose.

More good advice. We have to drive an hour and a half each way to go to our user group. Unless the topic is completely uninteresting to us I will go and I almost always learn something to make it worth while.

If you start one and get elected president, you get to go to SWW for free!

You can usually check your luggage in with the bell captain when you check out, then come back to pick it up when you're ready to go to the airport. I don't think there is any charge. There wasn't at the Barbary Coast.

A better reason to leave the next morning is that there always seems to be someone you want to talk to the last evening. We didn't fly out till 9:30, but I still felt cheated when we had to get up and say goodbye.

Before next year's SWW, we need to come up with a way to identify one another. I spotted Paul Kellner (TOP) by his red Craftsman suspenders. I happened to be standing right next to Wayne Tiffany and read his name badge. Wayne introduced me to Rob Rodriguez. Richard Doyle, Ed Eaton, Mark Biasotti and Matt Lombard were easy, since they were giving presentations. (Although Matt spotted me first, somehow, and I already knew Mark. Rob also gave a presentation.) Rumor has it that Paul Salvador was there, but I missed him and all of the rest of you. I suggest a comp.cad.solidworks tee shirt. My nominee is a picture of the Windows desktop with the "Solidworks has exited due to an error" message. With any luck, this will be a thing of the past by

2007, but I'm not holding my breath.

Jerry Steiger Tripod Data Systems "take the garbage out, dear"