Comparing SolidWorks World 2007 and 2008

For me personally, these two World events were immensely different. First of all, last year my book was not yet published, so I was only known by people who haunt forums and user groups. This year, a lot of people introduced themselves, which I enjoyed. Second, last year I was not part of the press, so I had no special access. Third, I did 3 presentations last year, and only 1 by myself this year, along with the Chumps circus.

I also immensely enjoyed hearing Woz speak last year. It really was a high point for me. This year, in a week I won’t remember the speaker’s names or their message. Because of the press situation for me, I didn’t get to go to a lot of sessions. I think I only saw 5 sessions all the way through, and I was in 2 of those. I saw Rob Rodriguez do PhotoWorks, Matt Cummins with Drag and Drop, and Elise Moss with Horizontal Modeling.

There were a lot of sessions to choose from both years, but it seemed to me that there were a lot more presentations by SolidWorks employees in 08, which seems like a good thing to me. It may just have been chance, and this certainly isn’t a scientific observation, but this year more people told me they attended at least one dud presentation. It must be very difficult for SolidWorks to make decisions about presenters based only on the presenter’s write up about himself. Maybe SW should require “try-outs” at local user groups in order to qualify for presenting at World, with any user group members who have been to World being eligible to vote on sending the presenter to World as a presenter or as an attendee.

At the end of SWW 07 I was exhausted and hung over. At the end of SWW 08 I have come down with a cold, and stuck in bed writing blog posts. In New Orleans, my girlfriend came down and we spent some time around town, and then made a nice trip of the drive home through Hattiesburg and Atlanta, which was great fun.

The biggest difference between 07 and 08 is the McEleney/Ray difference. Who knows how that is going to pan out in the end. My initial impression, again, unscientific and subject to change is that Ray is less gregarious than either Hirshtick or McEleney. That could be just because he’s a little uncomfortable in his new position.

I’ve only had one other interaction with Jeff, when he spoke at the inaugural meeting of the
user group. He seemed rather out of touch with real end user issues at that time, but many of the things he talked about this year show that he has been playing catch up.

I’ve heard several people, primarily reseller and press sorts, say that they have been surprised by the lack of new product or program announcements. I think there are two main reasons for this. First, SolidWorks employees are also saying that they are earlier in the release cycle this year than in previous years (which is great news to me because it implies that they are slowing down the release cycle forced march), and second with renewed focus on thoroughness, and polishing some of the rough spots, there are fewer resources for developing new things.\n\nSeveral SolidWorks employees tried to explain to me about how development is taking more responsibility for software quality instead of passing the buck to QA, which is a great thing, you might even say OBVIOUS, but in the end, users don’t care about HOW it happens, we just care THAT it happens. Don’t regale me with tales of your great feats, just show me software that works predictably.

Does anyone else have any comments about the differences between SWW07 and 08?