I wrote about COFES last week, the Congress on the Future of Engineering Software. I met lots of like-minded people and learned a lot.
That got me thinking about the other events I enjoy – the big PLM vendor annual user conferences. One of the best things about these events is that we get to hear the corporate vision and the product development path from the decision makers themselves. For obvious reasons, most people don’t get to attend more than one of these per year.
Solidworks World was an excellent event in January. I wrote about Solidworks and V6 at the time. You can get access to a lot of the presentations on the web site.
I just booked my ticket to PTC Live Global in Anaheim in June. In addition to the corporate presentations, PTC has historically brought customers on stage to tell inspirational stories, so attendees bring back more than a great education.
Maybe the folks at Siemens will invite me to Siemens PLM Connection this year. It’s in Dallas in June, which is not my favorite combination, but I would like to learn more about their plans for NX, Solid Edge and FEMAP.
Autodesk University for 2013 should also be really interesting. They may not be able to match the excitement of the 360 announcements of prior years, but I’m willing to brave the weather in Las Vegas in December to find out.
Are there other conferences that people really get a lot out of?