To begin I want to apologize for how long it has taken me to get this on here. I thought that this year, seeing that I was not doing any one on one interviews, would allow me to have more time to post here but that has not been the case so far. It seems as though I am busier this year than last but hey, that is OK with me.

At the beginning of every morning at SolidWorks WORLD, around 8:30 am the General Session takes place. SolidWorks kicked off this event yesterday with a bang by having an all around great opening General Session. Jeff Ray opened the session with a greeting and a state of the company address. SolidWorks was hoping for an attendance of 3,000-3,500, because of the economic conditions, and was blown away with an attendance of 4,313 as of Monday morning. All I can say is WOW! Jeff then went into throwing some numbers out to the audience by stating that the customer satisfaction is currently at 91% with 43% being very satisfied. However, SolidWorks wants to focus on the 9 people out of a 100 that are not satisfied so that they can inch closer to the top of the mountain. He then went into grading some various aspects of the company, giving Customer Service a B-, Performance a C+, and User Experience a B. Jeff then talked about some of the lessons that were learned during the great depression with the products that followed such as nylon, the car radio, and…SPAM. From that some of the great products that are being produced today such as companies like Microwind Technologies, Regenerative Technologies, Trojan UV Technologies, and Design That Matters. There is definitely some great products out there right now.

Next up was the star of the show in many people’s eyes. Sir Richard Branson joined Jeff on stage and was an absolute riot. If you do not know who Sir Richard is, he is the man behind the Virgin name brand. He definitely did NOT disappoint when he was on stage. Instead of writing out what Sir Richard talked about I am going to do a bullet list of some of the notable things he talked about.

• He jumped off stage at the age of 17 to protest a war.
• He joked that he is in the Guinness Book of World Records for the amount of times he has been pulled out of the sea.
• His nickname at the office is “Dr. Yes”.
• His first business experiences were destroyed by rats and rabbits eating them
• Virgin Airlines
  • Began by asking for secondary Boeing 747′s.
  • Boeing asked if the airline would go the whole way with a name like Virgin.
• He said that talking to the consumers is what makes a good design.
• You have to have humor in everything that you do.

All in all Sir Richard was an awesome guest on stage and the best one that I have ever seen at SolidWorks WORLD. There was a ton of buzz around the convention center the whole day on Monday because of him. That wrapped up the general session on Monday at SolidWorks WORLD 2009 and if that was any indication of what the rest of the week is going to be like it is going to be great.