Orlando or Bust…Build Your Network!

NETWORKING? This seems to be the big topic in this day and age. It seems like everyone is trying to build their own personal network with various types of acquaintances that they have. In the next part of the series of posts I am doing on how to convince your management to send you to SolidWorks WORLD 2009 in Orlando, Florida I will be touching on all of the various networking opportunities that you will have and that will present themselves for your company. Today there all kinds of social networking sites out there, sites like Facebook, MySpace, Linkedin, Twitter, etc. etc. etc. These are all great sites and I personally participate in a lot of them but in the end, no social networking site is as good as face to face networking in my opinion. A lot of times the social networking that you do on a daily basis lead to great face to face networking possibilities. One of the things I like the best about User Group meetings is the opportunity to network in person with other users in my area. SolidWorks WORLD offers all kinds of great face to face networking opportunities and they usually present themselves, all you have to do is be there. Below I have broken these opportunities down into the biggest 4 groups that I could think of. There are many more than what are just listed here but these I believe are the best ones, for me at least.

SolidWorks Users In Your Industry

SolidWorks does a great job of supplying you the opportunity to network at this conference. Every day they offer what they call “Birds of a Feather” lunches where they break up tables into different industries so that you can (if you want) sit at a table with other SolidWorks users in your industry. This is a great chance to talk to others about how they are designing their products. Are they designing everything in context, top down or bottom up assembly modeling. There are so many different ways to do things in SolidWorks that it is good to talk to others in your field and bounce your methods off of them, talk about their methods and find out why they do it that way. It may result in you coming back after the conference and start designing things a new way that will increase your proficiency and decrease your turn around times to get things out the door.

SolidWorks User In Your Region

Another part of the “Birds of a Feather” lunches are the opportunity to sit down with other users in your region. It is always a benefit to make contacts with other SolidWorks users that are close to your hometown. There always seems to be a closer relationship when you are in the same area as another user as opposed to communicating with someone from the other side of the country or a whole different country all together. Not saying that those contacts are not important also but the ability to have people closer around you that you can possibly meet up with after SolidWorks WORLD is very important. When I ran AutoCAD for the 1st five or six years in my line of work I had no other AutoCAD users that I could contact with issues or ideas. That is one of the biggest things that attracted me to SolidWorks was the community of users that seems so vibrant with this software.

As for the “Birds of a Feather” lunches I strongly suggest you participate in these. They are great opportunities to meet users and get your name out there.

SolidWorks Employees

The biggest thing that I noticed at my first SolidWorks WORLD last year was the availability of SolidWorks employees to everyone. It seemed as if everywhere I went there were SolidWorks employees talking to the casual users. This included Jeff Ray, Jon Hirschtick, Scott Harris and others who have MAJOR roles in the SolidWorks product and the future of SolidWorks. How many times have you sat at your computer and said WHY does the software act this way? Why can’t it do this or that? I have had this discussion inside my head many times and this is your chance to ask those questions to the people at the source of the answers. All you need to do is introduce yourself as you walk by and the door is open for discussion. How much better could you have it. Let them know what you think of the software and where you would like to see it go. The users are what drive this software so make your voice heard and let them know what you think. This is what they are there for.

SolidWorks Power Users

The SolidWorks community has some very well known faces in it that most people recognize. People like Phil Sluder, Ed Eaton, all of the SolidWorks Blog Squad, Gerald Davis, Wayne Tiffany and others that are walking around the conference just like you. There is nothing more that these users like (speaking for myself but I am pretty confident that the others feel the same way) than to talk to other users. In the end, every is a user of the software and everyone can learn something from others. The user that has been using the software since the 1st release can learn something from the user that has only used it for a month and vice versa. Be sure to introduce yourself to these people and talk to them, there is a wealth of knowledge out there that is just waiting to be explored.

In conclusion, SolidWorks WORLD is a great place to network face to face with all sorts of users. If you are there and see me wandering around aimlessly make sure you introduce yourself. I would love talking to you to see what I can learn from all of you.