Renew Your COE Membership Now for 2002 for Your Chance to Win a Compaq iPAQ

As of December 31, your 2001 COE membership benefits will expire! Watch your mailboxes for renewal invoices later this month, and renew your membership for 2002 by December 31 for your chance to win a Compaq iPAQ! Please contact COE Headquarters at info@coe.org for more information about membership renewal.

COE Spring 2002 Conference & TechniFair Update

Head to Palm Springs from April 14-17 for the COE Spring 2002 Conference & TechniFair, the worldwide gathering for users of the Dassault Systemes suite of products. This spring's event theme will be Vision into Practice…Design, Collaborate, and Integrate.

Top speakers in every industry, from both small and large enterprises worldwide will be on-hand, which includes top Dassault Systemes and IBM-PLM developers and executives as well as user experts from Bombardier, Black & Decker, DaimlerChrysler, Electric Boat, Airbus, BMW and Coca-Cola. The curriculum of over 100 content-rich, skill-building presentations, demonstrations, workshops, and in-depth technical sessions is extensive. See demonstrations of upcoming CATIA releases, visit training clinics, attend Development Planning Council sessions to submit your company's functional enhancement requirements, and meet with your peers from around the world. Between or after sessions, cruise the 50+ exhibitor showcase packed wall-to-wall with the latest products, services, and cutting-edge solutions or take part in some of the many fun, informal networking events.

Bookmark the COE Spring 2002 Conference Page to stay updated on all the latest event details, including breakout session lists, speaker line-ups, online registration, discount travel and hotel info, and all the extra conference features.

On Foreign Territory

By Phil Harrison, COE President

The COE organization has existed for some 18 years now and has held bi-annual conferences from the inception. In other geographies, users of Dassault Systemes software have not been as forthcoming in setting up organizations to arrange conferences where they can share experiences.

To fill a void Dassault Systemes and IBM together have organized such conferences in Europe (European CATIA Forum ECF), Australasia (Australian CATIA Forum ACF) and Japan (Japanese CATIA Forum, JCF). To see how these events differ from our COE conferences I traveled to Berlin in October to attend the European CATIA Forum.

The most striking difference is in size. While at COE we hold two conferences per year with 1100-1400 attendees, ECF is held once per year and has an attendance of 1800-2200 people. Not only are there more people, but also the multi-national makeup of Europe brings along it's own challenges. Delegates come to the conference from the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Spain, Holland, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Yugoslavia, Czech Republic, Poland and several other countries. Conference organizers provide simultaneous translations into English, German, French and Italian.

The ECF conference is scheduled for two full days and this year was on a Wednesday and Thursday. A further half-day of hands on training is scheduled for the Friday. The classes were full to capacity with some 200 people taking classes. This is something we have tried to do in the past, but not succeeded at. We need to revisit this issue; we know that hand-on training is valuable to our conference attendees.

There are many similarities to the COE conferences at ECF. The opening day format is very similar and they also offer a TechniFair. Other similarities include Dassault Systemes reviews of new products and enhancements and a daily newsletter. I found a big difference however in what we term "Breakout" sessions in two ways. First, Dassault Systemes and IBM recruit and select the breakout sessions from their customer base, therefore sessions tend to be success stories. Secondly the sessions tend to be less technical and more focused on business issues and what CATIA did for the company.

I think that we derive a great deal of value at COE from discussing the problems and issues that we face implementing CATIA, ENOVIA and DELMIA. We do it in a positive vein with our suppliers so that Dassault Systemes can fine tune their products and service offerings.

There is also no Development Planning Council (DPC) or enhancement planning activity at ECF. This is an activity of tremendous value, not only to our member companies, but also to Dassault Systemes and IBM. Users from various industries and company sizes working together to help define future product direction.

I enjoyed my visit to the ECF, but I can't help but think that European customers are missing out by not helping run their own events.

Who's that new guy on the Board of Directors?
by Scott Baker, DaimlerChrysler

By Scott Baker, DaimlerChrysler

If you didn't know, at the Fall 2001 COE Conference, an election for Board of Directors positions was held and by some stroke of luck I won. Bill Abramson, the COE NewsNet editor, asked me to write a note to let all of you know a little about me.

The first thing you should know is that, I have worked for DaimlerChrysler Corporation for over 22 years. Being from DaimlerChrysler, obviously a large enterprise, we have several thousand seats of CATIA, including almost 500 seats of CATIA V5 evaluating base V5, DMU, DELMIA, and ENOVIA V5. Where I work, the Activities Vehicles Product Team, formerly Jeep Platform, we alone have 90 seats of V5 DMU. But, I don't think you really want to know about DaimlerChrysler so I want to make a few points about myself.

I would like to let you know why I ran for the COE Board of Directors. Before running, I took this opportunity to have some meaningful conversation with several DaimlerChrysler management people to determine our reason for participation at COE. Being a large customer, we have direct contact with Dassault and IBM and usually have some idea of coming innovations and are able to express our concerns. What I concluded from the discussions was that our real payback from COE is to participate with our suppliers, since COE is the only forum where small and medium size companies can get similar information, to assure we have a common understanding of their issues and future innovations. Also, working with peer companies, we can get a feel for similar issues and share best practices. With this vision, it made perfect sense to have someone involved who works in a vehicle engineering platform team where we actually deploy this technology.

I bring a different perspective than you have seen from DaimlerChrysler in the past. My background is very diverse. I grew up in a farming community, working on a farm during college so when I see presentations about farm equipment I get pretty excited, because I actually know how the equipment works. Also, even though I work in automotive, my undergraduate degree is in Aerospace Engineering, so the rocket and plane processes are also familiar. I must admit though, I don't really know much about the ship business, but I do own two small boats.

What you really need to know is, I am not a computer guy! I make cars and trucks! I bring 22 years of experience of the automotive vehicle engineering process to the table, working in many engineering areas. I have worked on the advance, production, and launch phases of vehicle programs. As a design engineer and engineering supervisor, I have worked on stampings, injection moldings, castings, safety parts such as seat belts and airbags, worked in the human factors/ergonomics group, and engineering quality organizations. In my most recent assignment, the last three years, I have had the opportunity to deploy ENOVIA VPM, DMU, DELMIA, and CCPlant to the user community on the Jeep Platform. Trust me, it has been a real opportunity. What I usually find out is that it is not a matter of technology, but rather a matter of a less than optimum business process.

Lastly, I have a lot of experience working with volunteer organizations. This experience gives me a good understanding of what it takes to make a volunteer organization like COE work. I learned a lot about organization of speakers and membership being a past president of a Rotary Club. If you want to get involved with a highly structured volunteer organization, get involved with the Boy Scouts. Also, having been involved as a coach for my children, I have been able to "develop" my management skills to take back to the workplace.

I would like to invite all of you to come up and talk to me at any future events. The above information only tells a small part of my story. I try to be a pretty easy person to talk to and love to engage in lively conversation. Praise is nice, but please feel free to give me the truth even if it sounds like criticism. The only way I know to continue to improve is to continue to communicate. I look forward to serving you on the COE Board of Directors.