ACE 2010 On Site Comments!

I’ve spent the last two days completely immersed in the Aras Community.  Of course, I work for Aras so one might think this isn’t much of a deviation from the norm – but it is.  As the Director of the Aras Community I do spend the bulk of my time talking with and working for partners, open users, subscribers, and curious onlookers.  ACE brought all of those people together in a unified location.

The first few hours were filled with putting faces together with names and company logos, introducing one user to another with similar interests, and setting the stage for the Communicate and Collaborate theme of not only the event, but of the Aras Community at large.  The morning demonstrated the diversity of the Community all to well.  From the Keynotes presentation lead by Aras President and CEO Peter Schroer on the explosive Community growth, to Lear’s Director of Engineering delivered presentation on deploying PLM in the worst automotive economic time in our history – by mid-morning the room was buzzing with laughter, energy, and a shared belief that everyone in the room is part of a phenomenon.

Leave it to Doug “The Bulldog” Draughan to keep everyone pumped up with discussions about leveraging your existing resources to help internal adoption thrive; after all, who knows the personality of your people and how to get them moving better than you?  Bulldog kept it lighthearted by dropping in some tongue-in-cheek product marketing discussions from this leading edge OTC pharmaceutical company.  The Bulldog proved to be a tough act to follow but Kevin Friske from MiTeK stepped right up to the challenge.  Approaching the stage like a self-help junkie in denial he announced to the audience in true rehab style; “My name is Kevin Friske, and I’m an Aras Open User.”  Keeping the audience on their toes with his raw style and “…refusal to pay for the coolest Open Source Solution, and it actually works!” Kevin lead the community all the way to lunch on how you really don’t have to be a programmer to benefit.  Look for all the slides, and some more of my thoughts and recpap on the event, in coming weeks.