DIY Hits CAD Show Coverage

It what seems to be an attempt at Do It Yourself, we were treated all last week to frequent reports from the Siemens PLM analyst event from a member of the corporate communications staff. If you follow Siemens' social media expert Dora Smith on Twitter, you got a play by play of the event: who was speaking and their subject. You may even have seen Dora's interview with Tony Affuso, CEO of Siemens PLM, and found out that Tony golf game was an "embarrassment."

Yeah, I'm jealous. I haven't met Tony yet. I might have interviewed him for our TopTen Questions series.

Though press and bloggers were not invited, analysts were. That was no big surprise about the press being ignored. After all, SolidWorks had already placed press second to bloggers during the v2010 introduction.

Though some grumbling was heard, most of the old school press are resigned to their fate. The days of being flown around the country, being wined and dined by CAD royalty and listened to as if you had a monopoly on wisdom because it said "editor" on your name badge -- that's SO over. Nowadays, you have to produce. SolidWorks and Autodesk have discovered that they get much more bang for their buck with bloggers. New to the game, impassioned about the product, dazzled by the attention of those on high who make the software they are lucky to be playing with, a software vendor can expect serious amounts of positive ink to flow out of the heady experience of a free trip to headquarters, an invitation to a conference expenses paid, being the first on the block with the latest release, etc. -- all the stuff  we old editors and reporters take for granted.

Siemens PLM has little in the way of a blogger community. But they have Dora, a one-woman force. She may well have melted her smart phone keys with her Tweets. Still, a bit of variety would have been nice. Analysts are important, especially for public companies, but I heard not a peep from them from the show. I'm sure they are saving the good stuff for their paying clients or for one of their thousand dollar reports.

If more CAD vendors insist on the DIY approach, I'm going to miss the spice that varied reporting types can add. I already miss Ralph's pithy comments as he updates his blog during the keynotes. I can imagine Matt telling Dan Staples on what it would take to make Solid Edge take off like a rocket, Martyn commenting on the interoperability (or lack of) between Solid Edge and UG, or Deelip cornering a product manager on Synchronous Technology trying to handle complex shapes.

Comments

[Mark James]

CAD - vendors are a nightmare.

[Curt Moreno]

There is a definite conundrum involved for any enthusiast or traditional journalist in covering any industry with regularity. Especially if the writer depends on industry granted access in order to facilitate their writing.
This is true of the CAD industry or any industry.

For example, take the press event given by Apple on the 9th of September. While the event was music oriented there was one hardware issue that arose from announcements. However Apple's CEO, Steve Jobs, would not meet with journalist who wanted to press the matter. What he did do was meet with a select few press members who were sure to give light treatment to the matter and report in glowing terms.

This illustrates the duplicity of the matter. If an enthusiast and/or traditional press member wishes to continue to have privileged or even routine access to a source they tread a thin line concerning critique of that source. It must be a difficult situation to straddle for any writer.

As far as amount of "happy news" from the purely enthusiast, and largely amateur, bloggers of the CAD community how can one really expect much less? These writers, whom I number myself among, represent a faction that can choose what to write about and what not to. As a result you will find that most blogs fall into one of two categories: The Fanboy and The Malcontent.

Fanboys will report on matters they enjoy and companies who produce products and content they enjoy. Malcontents do precisely the opposite and will never find anything nice to say about anything because they only write to find fault.

To put a knot on this, it must difficult to empathize with the situation some writers find themselves in. It really isn't fair to assume that the content they produce to be pure fluff or to imply they are shills for the CAD industry. On the same note it isn't realistic to assume that this is a practice or situation that exclusively involves CAD developers, journalist and bloggers.

- Curt Moreno -

[Jon Banquer]

"All CAD vendors have monopolized their conference-exhibit events, and now they are moving on to monopolize their media. This way, the only news is happy news."

It's observations like this that clearly show why upFronteZine and WorldCAD Access are still the best and have no real rivals in the CAD world.

Jon Banquer
San Diego, CA
www.jonbanquer.wordpress.com

[Brad Holtz]

I started tweeting the event at the early portions, but Dora was doing such a good job that it seemed unnecessary to duplicate, and I was able to focus more on the material.

As for press, this was an event that focused not only on embargoed material, but it was also design as an intimate, interactive exchange with the small number of invited analysts. I expect that Siemens will continue to hold events where press (incl bloggers) are invited, but this was not that type of event.

[Dora Smith]

Roopinder, I wish the content and cost factors of this event would have enabled media attending. Most of what was shared was under NDA so there wouldn't have been much to cover other than off-screen antics you mention.

My only purpose in covering some of it DIY (other than this is the closest I'm going to get back to using my journalism degree) is to try to show some of the personalities behind our company/brands in social media. And this was a good time to track several of them down.

It was interesting to see some of the direct dialog with customers over Twitter as they asked some questions to me that I could get directly answered while I was there. That's the real power of DIY social media - when it enables a direct conversation we wouldn't have had otherwise.

But we still need editors/media to talk to a larger audience.(and to Ralph's point, provide more than just good news). Even a popular DIY blog isn't going to have the reach you do. So hopefully you'll be there next time - covering more than just my antics ;-)

In the meantime, you can decide if any of the DIY content is of interest to your readers.

To Curt, thank u for the kind comments and hope our blog lives up to the human conversation you note.

[ralphg]

All CAD vendors have monopolized their conference-exhibit events, and now they are moving on to monopolize their media. This way, the only news is happy news.

[Curt Moreno]

Unfortunately I do not subscribe to Ms. Smith's tweet feed. However it does seem, from your post, that she is approaching the social medium correctly. Rather than having the typical corporate blog that is just a portal for press releases she seems to put a human face on the site. She seems to have mastered delivery of information mixed with the human touch of casual conversation. Too often these outlets are just one mindless post toting the company line after another.

Kudos to MS. Smith! Hopefully Siemens recognizes the value of a communications specialist who can actually communicate on a human level. Needless to say, I hope she is being adequate compensated because employees with style are difficult to come by.

- Curt Moreno -