COE Insta-Poll Results and Next Topic

We want your feedback. Every month we will be asking you a different question on topics concerning your Dassault Systemes software installation, your experiences, or to help us improve COE member benefits. Next month we'll provide the results to our February poll and introduce a new question.

Results of the December/January poll:

The COE Spring Conference offers many Education and Training opportunities. How important is this to you in your decision whether to attend the Conference?

Please be sure to provide your input on our February poll: The COE Spring Conference includes a trade show called the TechniFair. How important is this to you in your decision whether to attend the Conference?

COE Education at the 2005 Annual PLM Conference & TechniFair

Register now for the COE 2005 Annual PLM Conference & TechniFair which takes place March 20-23, 2005 at the Phoenix Civic Plaza in Phoenix, Arizona. Be sure to register before March 11, 2005 to save $200 off the registration price!

New in 2005!
COE University provides vast training and educational opportunities for attendees, benefiting both the individual and the employer company. The content not only includes detailed product information, but also best practices and operational process methods. . Further complementing the value of these classes is your ready access to peers from many different companies facilitating your ability to network/discuss what you have learned. You will, also, have ready access to the world’s leading experts (e.g. Dassault Systemes developers, trainers and product managers, IBM’s leading technical staff and the marketplace’s leading system integrators). You will find it incredibly difficult to attend this conference and not acquire the know-how or work-around your were seeking.

There are 17 Training and Education sessions utilizing 50+ workstations over three days in both lecture and hands-on format. Attendees can sign up for these sessions (included in your registration fee) onsite in Phoenix! View all training and education sessions below.

• Digital Mock-up
• Introduction to V5 DMU Navigator
• Working with large assemblies
• Managing large assemblies in CATIA V5
• Large assembly management with publications
• Information management
• TeamPDM
• Experience the simplicity … Test drive the VPM navigator.
• Manufacturing
• Prismatic Machining Preparation Assistant in V5R14.
• Manufacturing automation with knowledgeware.
• New CATIA functionality
• New functionality in V5R14
• SmarTeam
• Customizing and administrating SmarTeam
• Managing concurrent CATIA V4 and V5 life cycles with SmarTeam
• Program management with SmarTeam
• System administration
• Enovia V5 administration and installation on a Windows Server
• Collaboration
• Take the next step in collaboration … Test drive the LCA navigator
• Best practices
• Designing with skeletons
• Analysis
• Analysis with SimDesigner
• Industrial education technology
• CATIA V5 Web-Based training

The COE PDA Final Program will allow attendees to download the final program details to their PDA via the COE Web site and at the conference. The final program details include: daily schedule of events, session abstracts, speaker bios, meeting room floor plan, exhibitor descriptions, TechniFair floor plan and more! If you do not have a PDA we have a special discount offer to allow you to add a Palm Zier 21 PDA to your registration fee.

COE has negotiated discounts with Apollo Travel for the COE 2005 Annual PLM Conference & TechniFair in Phoenix! As an attendee, you will receive discounts on airlines and car rentals that have been specifically negotiated for your trip! Book your hotel reservations at the Hyatt Regency Phoenix today. For reservations, call 800/233-1234 or 602/252-1234, ext. 4100. Ask for the group reservations for COE. Guaranteed discounted group rates are available first come-first serve.

Bookmark COE’s Web site at www.coe.org to access the latest Annual Conference information including conference schedule, technical session information, networking opportunities and more! Be sure to check back often for up-to-date conference information.

How to Justify Attending a COE Conference
Bill Abramson

Travel and training budgets are being slashed … enterprises are tightening their financial belts. You have attended COE conferences and you have found classes and sessions that have been extremely valuable, but you have to constantly face the daunting task of justifying attending the upcoming event. Some members of management may consider the events as perks … they may not be aware of the value that you, on behalf of your organization, has received. Most attendees of COE conferences are absolutely whipped after a 10-hour day of attending sessions and networking. So let me share with you some suggestions you might want to consider:

Create comprehensive value-packed reports

• Create a ‘book’ upon your return from the conference and route it to the heads of the areas that will benefit from its content. Separate it into meaningful sections so that the information pertinent to a specific area can be easily located. Be sure to include warnings, fixes and work-arounds. When the ‘right’ people see how much you’ve gotten out of the conference and how effectively you have shared it with the others in your organization they will be more than willing to fund your participation again.

Form a team

• If possible, form a team of the others from your company who will be attending the conference. Coordinate you coverage of the event. Meet after the event to combine your results and establish an action item list and plan to enable your company to move forward based on what you, collectively, have learned.

Train others

• When you return from the conference give presentations sharing the knowledge that you have attained and conduct classes to cover the functional lessons.

Implement at least one performance change

• Implement at least one performance improvement that you acquired at the conference. Be sure to document it and emphasize the resulting savings! One change could realize hundreds of thousands of dollars in savings. That would justify a lot of conference registrations.

Acquired fixes save big bucks

• Document the savings or cost avoidance resulting from what you learned at the conference. The smallest hiccups in a production environment cost major dollars.

Attractively priced consulting and advice

• Identify the value of the free consulting, advice and knowledge acquired at a COE conference.

Isn’t it critical that you maintain your level of expertise and technology awareness in order to maintain you career competency? How can your company make the smart decisions without have accurate and current information? How can you realize the benefits of new applications and functionality without a reasonable understanding of its benefits, risks and impacts?

We sure hope that this will help you and we see you in Phoenix on 21 March 2005.