Click Here

Click Here

Well the first day is drawing to a close and bed is sounding better and better.  You can never really get a good nights sleep on an airplane so actually being able to sleep in a bed tonight will be great.

We arrived in Barcelona today around 11:00 am CET time which is 5:30 am ET time.  After a train ride and then about a mile walk we arrived at Hotel AB Skipper where we are staying and also where all of the press events will be taking place tomorrow.  We checked in soon after we arrived and quickly found some familiar faces to catch up with.  It was great to see the other blogger’s and some of the other press people and see what they have been up to since SolidWorks WORLD 2008 in San Diego.

Around 7:45 pm CET we set out for Xalet de Montjuic which is a phenomenal restaurant set at the highest point in Barcelona which of course overlooked the entire city.  It was beautiful!

Now we are back at the hotel and we are starting to get ready for tomorrow’s big day of press events.  Be sure to check in tomorrow for a live blogging session during the press events.  Be sure to check out my actual blog page so you can follow along.  The address is www.rocksolidperspective.com.

As you might have noticed already on some of the other blogs, SolidWorks is hosting their SolidWorks 2009 Press Launch Event this week in Barcelona, Spain.  Because of this I will be flying to Barcelona tonight to attend these press meetings.  Some of the speakers for these meeting include Jeff Ray (CEO, DS SolidWorks), Bertrand Sicot (Executive VP or Worldwide Sales, DS SolidWorks) and Marie Planchard (Director of Worldwide Education Markets, DS SolidWorks).

For these meetings I am going to hopefully be trying something new.  Mike Puckett at www.mikescadblog.com is going to be live blogging from this event and I am going to try my hand at this also.  I have never done this type of blogging before but hopefully I can get it to work and work well.  Barcelona, Spain is 6 hours ahead of the eastern time zone in the United States for those that would like to follow along with this live blogging.  For those that will still be sleeping it looks as if you will be able to watch an instant replay of the live blogging journal after it has been completed.  I will also try to do a normal blog post each evening to give you a summary of each days events.

Barcelona…Here I Come!!!

P.S. You will only be able to follow along with the live blogging at my site (not through any of your RSS readers).  So please visit me at www.rocksolidperspective.com or Mike at www.mikescadblog.com

Last week Tuesday I published the first post (Orlando or Bust…Why You Need To Be There!) in a series of posts that I will be doing on how to get your company to send you to SolidWorks WORLD 2009 in Orlando, Florida.  This week I am go to hopefully help you with the first step in building a proposal to give to the upper management at your place of employment.  This post is going to be more of an outline for upcoming posts where I will break down these steps in more detail.

Where do I start?  That is usually the first question that I ask myself when I begin compiling information for a proposal such as this.  There are so many reasons why you need to attend SolidWorks WORLD as I outlined in the first post in this series, but what are the key things that will make your management realize that sending you is not an option but a necessity.  Last year I put together a proposal without any idea of what all of the buzz was about, but this year I have a better understanding of what happens there.

Here is a list of items to begin thinking about when compiling your information:

1. What is the largest underlying cause for your company not wanting to send you?  Money?  Don’t see the value?  No time?
2. What route of asking them to help you do you want to base your proposal around?  Pay for everything (Conference Pass, Hotel, Travel, Time Away From Work) or any other combination of these 4 things?
3. What would be the biggest benefit of SolidWorks WORLD for your company?  Over 150 Training Sessions?  Networking?  Partner Pavilion?  Direct contact with SolidWorks employees?

Once you come up with some of the answers to the above 3 questions you can begin thinking about your “plan of attack”.  There are different things you can do for your proposal and I will list some of them here.

• Use the Early Bird Savings as a leveraging tool.
• Create a Productivity Gains vs. Savings spreadsheet that will display your hourly rate and what the yearly savings will amount to based on productivity gains.
• Break down the different networking opportunities that you will have like the birds of the feather luncheons, the off site events and all of the other free time that you will have to network with other users.
• Break down all of the types of technical sessions that will be available and that you would like to attend.  And then explain how those will benefit the company.
• Talk to other users (myself and others) about their feelings on why you should attend this event.  Feel free to leave a comment or send me an email for a 1on1 conversation.
• Use the SolidWorks supplied Boss’ Justification Letter’s.
• Use the personal testimonial written by Bob Jordan that I received last year (also the podcast that he did later on) during my series of posts.

As I said before I will break down all of these bullet points more in depth in my upcoming posts so stay tuned.  This is a big event and it will probably involve some of your personal time to put together a stunning presentation for your bosses.  I found last year that lunch time is a perfect time to do some work on this.  It is worth every second if they make the decision to send you as my company did last year.  That is why I feel it is so important to share some of my steps from last year with you and hopefully I will see YOU there this year!

Check out this highlight video from SolidWorks WORLD 2008.

Stay tuned for the next post in this series of how to convince you management to send you to SolidWorks World 2009 at the Swan & Dolphin Hotel in Orlando, Florida.

Important dates to remember:

• September 15, 2008 – All presentation proposals must be submitted for consideration (All presenters will receive free admission into the conference).
• October 10, 2008 – Early Bird Special #1 ends.
• January 9, 2009 – Early Bird Special #2 end.