3DVIA Hands-On Session: My First Experience at SolidWorks World.

This was my first experience attending SolidWorks World in
the 5+ years I have worked for CATI so it was a highly anticipated event for
me.  I had heard from past attendees what
it was like and what to expect but I was excited to find out for myself.

 The main reason for
my attendance was to deliver a hands-on session for 3DVIA Composer.  It is something I am very comfortable
presenting in our normal 3 hour time slot with around 4-5 users but presenting
at SolidWorks World provides some unique challenges.  The time slot allotted was only an hour and a
half so I had to remove some of the content I usually deliver so I didn’t
overwhelm the attendees with too much information or rush through everything I
usually cover.  The main challenge was
the amount of attendees in the hands on sessions at SolidWorks World.  Due to the amount of interest in the hands on
sessions and the limited amount of resources, they place about 30 people in
each session.  This makes it much more
difficult to pay attention to each attendee and ensure they are moving along at
a good pace.  It was an excellent
experience showing so many people 3DVIA Composer and I hope this is my first of
many more presentations at SolidWorks World. 

What stuck out in my mind from the whole experience was the
size of the event.  There were around
4300 people in attendance which was amazing to see each morning in the general
session and during lunch each afternoon. 
It seemed that every room in the two hotels was constantly filled with
presentations about any one of SolidWorks products and that every person in the
hotel was a SWW attendee.  It really hit
home on the day after the event when it appeared that the entire hotel seemed
empty.