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COFES 2010 (Day 3) – Discussions and Roundtables

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Running parallel to the Vendor Appointments are discussions and round tables held in various hotel rooms of the resort. There are two rounds – one before and one after lunch. Each discussion is 90 minutes long and attendees are free to pick and choose whichever discussion they feel like joining.

In fact, something needs to be said about the 90 minutes. Unlike other conferences COFES is designed to be a highly informal event. According to the organizers the attire for COFES is “weekend casual (no suits); shirts with collars; sandals or sneakers. Shorts are okay.” The agenda of the conference is structured in a way that attendees are never in a building for more than 90 minutes without going outside to move to a new venue. Some time ago when I asked Brad Holtz, the man behind COFES, why the conference was always held at the Scottsdale Plaza, he told me, “The connection with the outside is important and we need a location that can almost guarantee sunshine“.

This year the themes of the discussions were:

Round 1

  1. Best Practices Aren’t Good Enough
  2. Bridging the Gaps Between “As Designed” and “As Manufactured”
  3. The Cloud — What’s It Going To Cost Me?: Evolving Business and Delivery Models for Software
  4. The Future of MCAD
  5. The Evolving Intersection of PLM and BIM
  6. Social Networking: Living with Too Many Channels
  7. Is It Time to Leverage CAx/xxM for Mushrooming Markets?
  8. User Group Leadership Roundtable

Round 2

  1. Design and Sustainability
  2. BIM for Design Not Equal To BIM for Construction
  3. A Sea Change in the Way We Work?
  4. Moving Design and Manufacturing to the Doctor’s Office
  5. What will it take to make analysis by designers practical?
  6. Free Apps, Point Solutions (best-in-class), or Integrated Product Suites?
  7. Going Beyond “Baked-In” PLM

Unfortunately I could not attend any of them because I was held up with my vendor appointments. However, I did attend a part of the round table “The Cloud – What’s It Going To Cost Me”. It was quite an interesting discussion. Too bad I had to leave it midway.