All checked in and squared away at #sww10 (fancy twitter hashtag speak) for SolidWorks World 2010. Years of road warrior-ing has finally paid off and an event is held at a Hilton. I have been a longtime Hilton Honors guy and was scored with a stack of Starbucks vouchers, free internet and access to their pd gym. 2 out of 3 is awesome!
Just dawned on me, that the last #sww I attended was in 2001. It was in Orlando and it was one of the first software shows I attended and I was floored. This was back when Jon Hirschtick was CEO and Jon McEleney was COO. Vic Leventhal did a fair amount of the mc-ing. Might seem like I am name dropping. Just trying to put things in perspective, I certainly don’t know any of these guys personally, but they are all figure heads in the SW community. Hirschtick is on twitter now and posted that he will be hosting another tweetup. How things change. All for the good.
Even in the 9 years since I was hear last, I still recognize many of the faces. I remember sitting on the edge of my seat as Aaron Kelley was on stage demoing What’s New in I guess is must have been SW2001. Those moments were defining for me as a software AE, demo jock.. SW defined what it was like to burst on the market and show the world how it was done.
To put things in perspective, here are a few points between then and now.
- winXP hadn’t been released yet
- Inventor was only a concept at the time
- PDMWorks, CosmosWorks, FloWorks, CircuitWorks and a whole slew of others were Gold Partners
- Hirschtick made a big deal about being on the road to 100k seats (I thought he was out of his mind)
- The name DS SolidWorks was the furthest thing from anyone’s mind
I’m pleasantly surprised to see the young, badass feeling still is alive and well, so far. Let’s see how I feel after a few more days.
Tags: #sww10
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A mechanical engineer that is obsessed with technology. I am the Product Manager for CFdesign and work in a virtual office in Philadelphia, PA USA. Outside of technology, I am an avid Liverpool FC supporter and a massive phan of the band PHISH.
