SolidWorks World keynote speakers upstaged by sideshow

Today we had two keynote speakers in the morning session. The first one was fairly forgettable, although he struck a chord with some funny pictures of signs. Dr. Norman was supposed to talk about “Emotional Design”, but didn’t talk about that at all. Instead he gave us the same old tired story about how stupid engineers are, and how we should make parts look pretty instead of square. This is a topic even second year engineering students are sick of. You’d think SW could deviate from this theme, but it is one they keep returning to. It seems they alternate years getting the keynote speaker right or wrong. 2005 – Burt Rutan = wow! 2006 – Seymour and Powell = what bores. 2007 – Steve Wozniak = wow!  2008 – Dr. Norman = snooze.

The next speaker was far more relevant. Dr. Ballard spoke of undersea robotics, and the technical challenges involved. The Titanic discovery was sensational, but not nearly as interesting as the story of the technology and process used to accomplish it. He also talked about technical education for kids, and actually involving kids in real projects. This was a positive message about the successes of engineering, not the preachy brow beating of endless cliches that Norman delivered.

Both of these guys were upstaged, however by yesterday’s demonstration of insane genius, which is of course my favorite kind, by Theo Janssen.

I first saw Janssen’s stuff last summer on Thomas Parel’s blog. Janssen creates these plastic contraptions which he calls beests, and which move along the beach powered by the wind. Fully amazing stuff. He even had one with him on stage, and it walked across the stage for us. The geometry was figured out by running a program on an Atari computer, I’m guessing in the 80’s.

One of the most amazing things he created out of plastic tubes and zip ties was logic circuits powered by compressed air in plastic bottles. He used this as a “feeler” of sorts so that the beest could detect when it ran into the water. The water in the tube creates more resistance than air, and makes the circuit react differently, changing the direction of the beest. Brilliant, really.

At the end of Theo’s presentation, the crowd rushed the stage to see his contraption and to get him to sign autographs. This didn’t happen with any of the other presenters.

This is the kind of stuff that makes going to SWW worthwhile.