PR, Marketing and the Business of CAD: AutoCAD Blogs way ahead of the market

CAD people

The team at IDEAL Scanners
Richard Doyle
Richard Doyle, noisy advocate of the SolidWorks User Groups, gathers them all together at his blog.
Chris Kelley
Steve Thomas
Ralph Grabowski
The catalyst of many a CAD discussion, Ralph helps the industry drum beat stay regular
Martyn Day
funny, rude, and utterly english, Martyn often speaks to a wider audience than simply european CAD users
Evan Yares
Often mentioned as a "Dean" of the CAD industry, Evan is ballsy and always great for a good, old fashioned, heated discussion
Roopinder Tara
CAD, CAM and CAE editor
Rick Stavanja
go here for every piece of news about the CAD industry you could ever want
Randall Newton
Randall is an AEC and MCAD industry luminary with surprising insights into the industry

December 08, 2005

AutoCAD Blogs way ahead of the market

It looks like blogs are going to carry the future of communication, community and online publishing for just about everybody. Bearing that in mind, me 'n the team in the office are currently collecting and bookmarking as many blogs as we can find about CAD.

So far, we have about 45 and adding more by the minute.

What's surprising is the sheer amount of AutoCAD-related blogs that are appearing - a good 85% at this point. And about 25% of those are Autodesk-based: i.e. Autodesk employees who evidently are tasked with communicating with their users via the blogs.

But what's alarming is the lack of blogs from other vendors. You would think given the aggressive nature of the industry, that Solidworks, Bentley, UGS, DS and the rest would have jumped on to this bandwagon. Mais non! Searches I am doing on blogs for other CAD products are coming up empty!

So I ask:

1) Please send links of any blogs that deal with other CAD products. We want to find them!

2) If there are no other blogs other than 85% AutoCAD and a few independent activists, then what's up with that? Is everyone else sleeping out there? Wake UP!

December 08, 2005 in PR/Marketing | Permalink

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d834599a6b69e200d8349a318469e2

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference AutoCAD Blogs way ahead of the market:

Comments

Greg Milliken, CEO of Alibre, has a blog at http://alibre.squarespace.com/

Posted by: Evan Yares | December 12, 2005 at 03:18 PM

Here is my addition to the CADD Blogs http://rjrcubed.blogspot.com/

Posted by: Rande Robinson | December 14, 2005 at 06:42 PM

Hi there!

Here's a blog for CAD Admin + Pro/E tips, etc:

http://cadmincouk.blogspot.com/

plus - here's a page with links to several blogs from PTC employees about Intralink, etc:

http://www.ptc.com/community/prointralink8/

Regards

Posted by: Edwin Muirhead | December 15, 2005 at 12:59 AM

I have a blog for Raster Design. it is at http://rasterdesign.blogspot.com.

I'm getting things lined out to add a lot of information to it, starting next week.

Posted by: Jane Smith | December 15, 2005 at 06:50 AM

NOT YOUR FATHER’s CAD/CAM COMPANY

Brian K Seitz

Cyon Research

January 22, 2006

Over the past several weeks, I’ve heard stories of quote “juvenile behavior” between various leading CAD vendors, and stories of the antics of the past. Having grown up within the industry as customer, vendor and now commentator I find several disquieting trends within the I.T. and permeating into the CAD/CAM segment.

First of all disparaging remarks about the competition have always been around. Who hasn’t been witness to a vendor unloading a barrage of negative comments about their competition? Even IBM the once supposed hallmark of ethical conduct with their business conduct guidelines radically changed how they were interpreted in the 1990s after another monumental change; layoffs for the first time in history. In the 80s, if you where an IBM employee and caught disparaging the competition; it was off to IBM jail. The conduct guidelines where seriously enforced when a violation occurred. Unlike those upstarts on the West Coast (WIN_TEL and APPLE), IBM Marketing materials and efforts won’t ever mention the competition. However that changed as the West Coast Crowd chewed IBM market share every year.

So what has changed? We for one thing; take a look at the entertainment we all see now-a-days: Survivor, The Apprentice and a whole host of “Reality TV” displaying people on their worst behavior to win a prize. And these shows receive top ratings so somebody, a lot of some bodies must be watching. We have collectively enjoyed the David and Goliath battle between WIN-TEL and IBM until WIN-TEL became a goliath too. Today business has become a blood-sport. Is that good or bad; I don’t know. Maybe it always was but hidden under the surface of old fashion courtesy.

Fast forward to the present; part of the market planning efforts IBM uses are to build value propositions that specifically compare itself and its products/services with the competition. So if the Big Boys on the block are doing it, why should everyone else?

The question I have though is who does all this marketing mayhem benefit? Certainly, not the customer. With all the noise and chatter, I don’t see that any of these CAD/CAM goliaths are putting forth any more value to me as a customer as they did in 1998. Is the software able to take advantage of the latest hardware improvements dual core, etc.. Has collaboration capability really been incorporated into the product such that I can share my designs with others without them having to buy additional products and/or a CAD package? Funny, these where the same questions I was asking CAD/CAM vendors in the 80s when I was consulting to engineering firms on what systems to buy?

Has it benefited the CAD/CAM companies? Let’s see…Computervision gone, Intergraph, Applicon, and Anvil is no longer a dominate player. Each seems to fall from grace when they spent their marketing efforts obsessively comparing themselves to the competition instead of to what the customer wanted. The end result has been a shakeout or consolidation of the industry, just like the airlines, oil, and banking industry hoping to gain profitability through economic quantities (Is Autodesk GM and Solidworks Chrysler). The question I have is..is there a Toyota in the background analyzing what the market is really looking for circa 1970s small cars about to chew both of them up for being asleep at the wheel. Just wondering.

Posted by: Brina K Seitz | January 22, 2006 at 02:57 PM

Toyota spent time figuring out what was important to the customer, not what was important to their competition.

I remember people joking about Toyota and Datsun during the 60s as made from recycled beer cans. The Big Four had little or no respect for them. Then when the West Coast was dominated by recycled beer cans they chalked it up to just trendy people in La La Land. Then when the energy crisis hit they just called it timing, then after the energy crisis when mid-America was switching to beer cans also and market share was increasing to 30% Detroit had to admit something was not right in Michigan.

United, Delta, American, all of them are going out of business. Something isn't right with how they're conducting business. The Hub and Spoke is technically more efficient than point to point, then how come SouthWest is beating they're pants off. Maybe it's because they've create an impression that it's a busride in the air and they deliver on that promise for a premium price, while SW does it at a busride price. If you've going to charge premium prices maybe you should deliver premium services.

Most of the banks are now in the same boat; as they cut down on personalize people support in branches customer loyalty has dropped significantly.
Getting a free toaster for opening a new account is no longer seen as a worthwhile premium for long lines, poor service, high fees and poor interest rates. Consolidation of financial enterprises continues and has become a global commodity with little differentiation resulting in little customer
loyalty.

It becomes the issue that it's easier or appears easier to shout about your existing junk in the hopes of selling you sunk investment rather than really find out what your customer wants and build it for a fair price.

Oddly enough I did an experiment in the 80s with a large Computer Company's Aerospace Customers. I invited them in to Santa Monica's Graphics Lab for a weeklong requirements and design session. At the end of the week my developers new exactly want the customers wanted and how to make it, the customer's had a price range they could live with, and my management had wet shorts because all of the customer wanted to pre-order a product (IN VOLUME
LICENSES) for something that hadn't even been coded yet. Needless to say the project was terminated quickly due to weak bladders. The customer understood the situation; however, they hoped that all the direct feedback would at least influence the direction of the product line. It didn't management went right back to doing things as usual. Get a list of top 10 features people talk about and implement them in the product so we can claim
then too.

Despite the call for innovation within businesses, when it comes to really doing it, it scares the hell out of managers and they resort to management by numbers or rearview mirror planning, and then are surprised why some other company ate their lunch with the same ideal they passed up.

Posted by: Brina K Seitz | January 22, 2006 at 02:59 PM

I agree, blogs are the future

Chris
www.threerooms.com

Posted by: Threerooms | August 29, 2007 at 03:30 AM

Name=http://grekigal.narod.ru/
Buy movies and films.It's just wonderful.downloads movies,buy very cheap a movies. Less then 1.99$ for a complete movie! Buy all quality movies. DVD, PDA, DivX, iPod formats. More than 30 000 movies of all genres and years! Download Movies Online=buy moviesbuy movieshttp://grekigal.narod.ru/
Mail=dino@yahoo.com Country=greece
Age=23
City=tib
ICQ=255863147
Job=shop
Phone=991847211123
Title=buy movies

Posted by: harriss | December 26, 2008 at 09:46 PM

Qualitative breaking of mail boxes on Gmail, yahoo, mail.ru, yandex, AOL....
We render services in access reception to post electronic boxes Gmail, yahoo, mail.ru,
yandex, AOL.... By request. It is guaranteed, it is qualitative, anonymously, a date of
performance of the order of 1-5 working days. If you wish to get access to the
stranger email, to you here: http://hackmail.htmlplanet.com. You name to us a box to
which you wish to get access and soon we send you the password to this box
and you have access to another's information. Also with us it is possible to
communicate on email: emailbreaking@gmail.com.
All completely anonymously.
HackMai Command.

Posted by: HackMail | February 03, 2009 at 03:58 AM

Just try to guess...
I think nissan is good.

Posted by: nissanauto | March 20, 2009 at 05:51 AM

None that I am personally aware of, but I have never used an iPhone or iTouch. I did a Google search for iPhone wifi and came up with these good tipshttp://iphonenow.info/edge-wifi-use-on-your-iphone-how-and-why/ that might help you out.

"You don't stop laughing when you grow old; you grow old when you stop laughing." -- Michael Pritchard

Posted by: jackybpp1 | March 26, 2009 at 03:40 AM

hi , this is my firist post , I found a link wiht 205 best free apps for iphone and ipod touch , is very nice !!!

http://uploading.com/files/58C1SPWW/205.Iphone.free.apps.zip.html

Posted by: iphoneapps123 | April 17, 2009 at 09:51 AM

Os melhores apartamentos em Jardim Camburi estão a sua espera.
Temos as melhores opções de imóveis , preços e condições de financiamento.
Contato:
Tel 0xx27 3084-5709
corretorimoveisjc@gmail.com
corretorimoveisjc no gmail.com

Apartamentos de 3 quartos em Jardim Camburi
Apartamentos de 3 quartos com suíte em Jardim Camburi
Imóveis de 3 quartos em Jardim Camburi
Apartamento de 3 quartos em Jardim Camburi
Casa de 3 quartos em Jardim camburi
Cobertura de frente ao Mar em Jardim camburi.
Imoveis na Planta em Jardim Camburi

Posted by: jardimcamburi | June 02, 2009 at 10:42 PM

Send Fake Emails from whoever u want!! SendAFakeEmail.com ! You can email from anyone u like!!
Even Billgates!! SendAFakeEmail.com

Posted by: SendFake | June 07, 2009 at 05:25 PM