1984
- COE was formed Nov. 24 as the CATIA Operators Exchange by Bill Abramson of Grumman Aerospace and representatives from IBM (product sales and support), Lockheed Aeronautics, General Motors, Chrysler, and 14 other companies
- COE set its annual membership fee at $500 for companies holding a CATIA license
1985
- COE held its first full conference in October with 15 customers in attendance, including the founders and Cessna, General Dynamics, TRW, and Francis Bernard of Dassault Systèmes
- CATIA V3 was announced at the COE Conference
1987
- Bernard Charles (future Dassault Systèmes CEO) attended his first COE conference to provide R&D support
- The Develop Planning Council (DPC) was formed to coordinate enhancement requests and to have direct interface with developers
- COE was incorporated in the state of Texas on Sept. 23
1988
- Dassault Systèmes started officially attending COE conferences, sending product managers and research and development staff from Paris to participate
- COE created the Installation Data Guide to capture information about Mainframe and Workstation seats to be shared with members for networking purposes
1989
- COE contracted with Allman & Company for management services
1991
- CATIA V4 was announced at the COE Conference
1994
- COE marked its 10th Anniversary at the Fall Annual Conference in Dallas, Texas
- COE selected SmithBucklin as its new management company
1995
- COE merged CADAM’s user community and educational content into COE
1996
- COE launched its online forum message board
1997
- COE Conference attendance exceeded 1,000 for the first time at Disney’s Coronado Springs Hotel in Orlando, Fla.
- Bill Abramson stepped down as COE President and became the Board Advisor sponsored by Dassault Systèmes and IBM. Phil Harrison of Lionheart Solutions assumed the role of President
- COE updated its logo
1998
Dassault Systèmes purchased IBM Product Data Management (PDM) and established the ENOVIA brand, which COE began to build into its conference program
1999
- COE held its first Executive Forum in Nashville, Tenn.
2000
- Dassault Systèmes acquired Deneb and COE began incorporating the rebranded “DELMIA” educational content into its conference program
- COE began promoting the fact that it covered more than CATIA educational content by adding the tagline “Serving the users of CATIA, ENOVIA, and DELMIA” to its logo
2001
- CATIA V5 was announced at the COE Conference
2002
- COE began incorporating SMARTEAM educational content into its program at the Conference
- COE updated its logo to include SMARTEAM in the tagline
2004
- COE revised its event format from two Annual Conferences to one spring conference and two industry workshops: Aerospace & Defense in Wichita, Kan. and Automotive in Dearborn, Mich.
- COE marked its 20th Anniversary at the Annual Conference in Miami, Fla.
- COE Voting Representatives voted to create term limits for all board of director’s positions and a slate election process
2005
- Scott Baker of Chrysler became COE’s third President, and the first to be elected with term limits
- Dassault Systèmes acquired Abaqus and launched the SIMULIA brand, and a portion of their educational content was incorporated into the annual conference program
2006
- Dassault Systèmes acquired MatrixOne and COE incorporated content into the ENOVIA educational content at the annual conference
2007
- COE held its first Develop & Deploy Workshop in Las Vegas, Nev.
2010
- Dassault Systèmes acquired IBM’s PLM sales and support team, which resulted in merged COE liaison roles on the board of directors and within committees
- Dassault Systèmes launched CATIA V6, which was incorporated into COE’s educational content
2011
- COE moved its online presence to the Socious association management platform, which resulted in cost savings and new features for membership, communities, forums, and conference management
2014
- COE began incorporating education for the Dassault Systèmes 3DEXPERIENCE Platform after its launch at the end of 2013
2016
- COE rebranded to become the Community of Experts of Dassault Systèmes Solutions with a new logo, and it officially expanded its scope to include all brands of Dassault Systèmes (except Solidworks)
- COE launched a new responsive design website
- COE relaunched the Automotive Workshop in Dearborn, Mich.
2017
- COE and Dassault Systèmes (Bruno Latchague) signed a three-year partnership agreement which embraced COE as the user community of all Dassault Systèmes brands (except Solidworks) and provided deeper support
2018
- COE and Dassault Systèmes conducted a joint growth planning meeting at the DS Waltham office as part of an initiative by Dassault Systèmes to provide additional market intelligence to enable growth of the COE user community
2019