PLM World Midwest Chapter 2007 Fall Conference Overview

http://mw.plmworldgroups.org/index.php

The PLM World Midwest Chapter User Group (MWRUG) held their fall conference Friday, Oct 19, 2007 in Minneapolis, MN. Rollo Cain, User Group Chairman, opened the membership meeting with a greeting and a few comments on the agenda structure and the facilities. He then introduced Sarah Grundstrom, the PLM World Asst. Business Director, who gave a presentation on PLM World & the June 2008 Florida conference announcement. Jennifer Faulkner, Siemens Sales Rep, gave a detailed Siemens Company review. For the main presentation, it was Tony Banitt presenting a great overview of the ‘unified’ Teamcenter 2007 architecture. This information gave the attendees some great views on how Teamcenter 2007 should merge Enterprise & Engineering and make improvements that can directly impact a user's productivity.

After the "Opening Sessions" ended, the 6 Technical Tracks (34 sessions) started. This included 2 User Presentations, covering 2 of the technical track and 2 vendor presentations. The other 30 technical sessions were supported by Siemens staff(12)and Maya(2). Again this year the vendor/partner response was quite positive, with 9 attending. This event was very well attended and we heard many positive comments by both users and vendors, on the level of technical information, vendor/partners attending and the layout of the facility. Several very nice door prizes were also made available by the vendor/partners for the drawings during the afternoon break & at the end of the conference. The 2 NX Technical Tracks (NX5 Overview, NX5 Direct Modeling, TcEng Track) had great attendance & rave reviews. There were several additional Solid Edge attendees this year as we grow our SE Track content and they had good excitement in that track. This gives those SE users an opportunity to see more of the larger Siemens PLM picture. The Teamcenter Track grew in attendance again and was very well attended; with some very good comments about things they could take back with them. The Analysis Track grew in attendance this year again, with some great feedback on the information that was presented and some excitement about the new NX & Nastran 5 capabilities. One of the highlights was the energy in the CAM sessions, which included a variety of customers & Siemens developers & Product managers, discussing many aspects for the CAM software.

The User Group meeting attendance grew again this year to 176 user registrations, for a total of 196 attendees. There were many new companies and user’s participating for the first time, which was very encouraging. Having the expanded format featuring six tracks (Teamcenter, NX, Ideas, Analysis, Solid Edge, CAM) to choose from, along with being able to visit the Vendor/Partner Fair during the day, contributed to the great users experience this year.

Here are a few of the user's comments about this conference:

"Excellent learning day. – Thank you very much.”
"Very good conference. Good depth. I learned something new from every session.”
“Appreciate the time the presenter took to answer questions out of the box. Thank you."
"It was pretty fast paced, but a very good day."
“It was nice to see so much CAM.”
"Good overall event – well planned."

Our (MWUG) mission and goal is to help the user become more knowledgeable of Siemens products and at the very least, give them a tidbit, that makes them more productive and their job more enjoyable. Based on some of the survey comments, I think we accomplished our mission! For more detail on the conference Agenda and Partners, visit our web site at http://mw.plmworldgroups.org/index.php

Rollo R. Cain
PLM World MW Chapter Chairman