COFES 2010 (Day 3) – CAD Society Awards

Day 3 culminated with a reception and a closing session after dinner where the CAD Society industry awards were handed out. For those who don’t know, the CAD Society is a not-for-profit organization with a goal of bringing together people and companies in the CAD, AEC, Mechanical, Manufacturing and GIS fields. After seeking nominations members of the CAD Society vote on the nominees.

Joe Greco Community Award

This award is given to an individual for his or her outstanding work in improving communication and developing community within the CAD industry. This year the award was given to Roopinder Tara of Tenlinks. TenLinks is a CAD, CAM and CAE media company that comprises of a network of web sites and newsletters. The TenLinks Daily is probably the most famous of them all. Not too long ago, Roopinder started a CAD jobs site called CADTalent.com, to help people find jobs in the CAD, AEC and MCAD.

Leadership Award

This award is given to an individual who has shown outstanding technical and business leadership in the CAD industry. This year Ping Fu, the co-founder of Geomagic received the award. Under Ping’s leadership Geomagic has earned six patents for in the field of reverse engineering. Before starting Geomagic, she was Director of Visualization at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, where she initiated and managed the NCSA Mosaic software project that led to Netscape.

Lifetime Achievement Award

As the name suggests, this award is given to an individual as a recognition of his or outstanding technical and business contributions to the CAD industry. This year the award was given to Mike Payne of SpaceClaim. Mike co-founded PTC in 1985 where he was Vice President of Developent. He then went to co-found SolidWorks in 1994 where he assumed the position of Executive Vice President of R&D and then became the CTO of Dassault Systemes in 1999. Later he led Spatial as the CEO and co-founded SpaceClaim in 2005 where he is currently the Charman of the Board of Directors.

That’s it from me from COFES 2010. Tomorrow morning I was supposed to start my long journey back to Goa. Thanks to the volcano in Iceland that has messed up all air travel in Europe, I will be flying to India the other way around via Hong Kong. The problem is I will not be flying for another two more days since I managed to get myself seats on flights only after Tuesday. So till then I will need to sit tight in Phoenix.

It’s been a long two weeks away from home and I am longing to get back and squeeze my boys (and wife). 😉