Well, day 2 has been completed and I already know that SolidWorks WORLD 2009 will be an unbelievable event. Last year on Sunday SolidWorks hosted a press day that kept me very involved the entire day. This year they did the event in Barcelona instead so Sunday was a little, and I do mean a little more relaxed than last year but it still gave me the time and opportunity to get some other things done.

The day started off a little bit later than normal with my first meeting being at 11:30. For the next hour I got to spend some time with Bill Doll who is the Director of SolidWorks Labs. We talked about some great tools that they have developed such as Treehouse and Tagger among others. Bill gave me a good sense of where SolidWorks Labs is headed in the future with new products that they will be releasing. I also got to see a hands on demonstration of a product that I am not allowed to talk about YET but I know that when it does go public this new tool is going to be VERY, VERY popular. That is all I can say about it right now, but when you see it published here you will know what I am talking about. So stay tuned!

Next up was a meeting with 3 employees of 3Dconnexion. I had the pleasure of meeting Dieter Neujahr (President), Froi Lomotan (Director, Advanced Software Technology) and Jane Fainer. For those of you that do not know what 3Dconnexion is, it is the company that produces a great 3D mouse product. You can check out their website here.

After these 2 meetings I headed off the CAD Managers Boot Camp session that Greg Jankowski does every year. This session is a 4 hour, that’s right, 4 hour marathon of anything and everything CAD Administration. He covered everything from what kind of system to get, what platform, how to keep you system clean and backed up, to the SolidWorks Installation Manager, etc. etc. etc. Greg does a tremendous job with this presentation every year and this year did not disappoint. He mentioned that his presentation was going to be posted after the conference so I will try to remember to get back on here to give everyone the link to it.

Right from that we headed to the SolidWorks WORLD 2009 Welcome Reception. This is where the Partner Pavilion is opened up to all of the attendees. There was great food and drinks supplied and even better networking opportunities. It is always fun to run into people that you haven’t seen in a while along with meeting new great people. If I were to begin to mention everyone that I reconnected with and met for the first time here it would be a very long list that would probably put you to sleep. I got the opportunity to look at a great product called HSMWorks which is a CAM package that runs right inside of SolidWorks. I will be doing a review of this product later on so keep your eyes open for it.

This wrapped up the night at SolidWorks WORLD 2009 for me. It was a great beginning to the event and I am looking forward to what Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday have to offer. Stay tuned right here for continuing coverage of the events of SolidWorks WORLD and also be sure to check out what the other bloggers are saying about the event. You can get their links on the sidebar on the right.

SIDE NOTE: I was hoping to do some live coverage of events but the Wifi here at the hotel is not all that great so I am disappointed to announce that I will not be doing any live blogging here. Sorry but hopefully I can cover everything else here instead. You can also check out the live Twitter feed that Lou Gallo
has set up by clicking here.

Day 1 at SolidWorks WORLD 2009 is in the books and it was a great time. The day began for me at around 3:00 pm when I officially checked into the Swan & Dolphin Resort. All I can say is what a place. Matt West (SolidWorks Corp) made an awesome video of doing a walkthrough of the hotel; you need to check it out here.

Around 5:00 I headed down to my first meeting of the event which was a blogger’s roundtable. Julie Casanave, Bill Taylor, Rob Rodriguez, Ricky Jordan, Rich Hall, Alex Ruiz, Mike Puckett, Matt Lorono, Gabi Jack, Matt West, myself, Richard Doyle, Jeff Mirisola, and Jim Wilkinson were in attendance. This was a great time and it included a lot of laughter from the SolidWorks Blog Squad. It was great to see all of these people again and catch up on life.

After the blogger’s roundtable, everyone headed over to the lobby lounge of the hotel for the 1^st annual SolidWorks WORLD 2009 Tweetup / blogger social. It is always fun to finally meet all of the people that you have been communicated with via text (tweeting and emails) over the past year. It was a pleasure of mine to finally meet people such as Charles Culp and others. Jeff Ray and Jon Hirschtick even made appearances which is always a treat. I do think however that the highlight of the event was the cookies and fudge that Ricky Jordan brought along from his wonderful wife Christy. If you do not already know Christy you need to find out who she is IMMEDIATELY! She is the woman behind the Southern Plate website and cookbook. Between being an owner of her cookbook and a taste tester of her cookies and fudge, she is amazing!

This event more or less wrapped up the 1^st day for me at SolidWorks WORLD 2009. I have quite a bit going on today (Sunday) so stay tuned right here for details of what happened on Day 2 of the event.

Well we have officially arrived! We landed in Orlando this morning at around 9:30 and have been go, go, go ever since. I am here with family so I am enjoying a good day and a half with them before I get fully involved in the happenings of SolidWorks WORLD 2009. We drove past the Swan & Dolphin Resort this afternoon and it looks like it is going to be a beautiful venue for this year’s event.

As I mentioned in a previous post I will not be doing a lot of 1 on 1 interviews this year like I did this year. Instead I will be focusing on bringing you some great, in depth information from the various technical sessions that I attend and the general sessions that happen every morning. I will also be live blogging hopefully (internet connection permitting) and twittering live from the event throughout. All in all it should be a great 5 days here at RockSolid Perspective. Below is a list of some exciting “extra” things that I will be able to write about on here.

1. A product demonstration of HSMWorks
   
2. A bloggers roundtable (NDA meeting but hopefully some of the stuff we will be able to share)
   
3. Some exciting new SolidWorks Labs projects
   
4. 3D Connexion news (NDA meeting but hopefully some of the stuff we will be able to share)
   
5. A Jeff Ray interview ???
   
6. SWUGN summit meeting details
   
7. CSWP & Off Site Event at the Animal Kingdom
   

These are some of the things you can look forward to throughout the next 5 days. I will be sure to have at a minimum 1 post per day (maybe end up being late at night or early morning) that will be a recap of each day’s events. I will also throw in some additional posts from time to time that will highlight the above mentioned items.

The key for me this year will be to manage my time well so that I am able to attend all the sessions I would like, keep you informed on what is going on by blogging, and stay rested up so that I am able to learn during the event.

Please set a bookmark for RockSolid Perspective or add it to your RSS reader for the next few days because I will keep this blog chocked full of all SolidWorks WORLD 2009 items. Also, please be sure to pay attention to the other SolidWorks Blog Squad sites for complete coverage of this event.