PR, Marketing and the Business of CAD

Bloggers Grow Up a little at SolidWorks World

Last year's SolidWorks World welcomed the company's "independent Bloggers" for the first time. Somewhat shy and a little intimidated by the regular CAD press, they tended to stay quiet, maybe aloof, but perhaps more in fear of the 'Press' label they had been given.

SolidWorks World 2008 welcomed the same group back. They again were on the quieter side during press briefings, but grew noisier and more confident throughout the week's events. While at the event, I had great fun sitting down and chatting with them, and it was interesting to see the continued inferiority complexes they still had when questioned about 'being press'.

Now there are still some distinctions in the press world, although the lines blur a little more with each coming event. The 'independent bloggers' I refer to here are not journalists by trade, but in this case are professional SolidWorks users, voicing their opinions on the side, unfunded and for the love of the software.

On top of that there are many "established press" that still use 'traditional press methods' for their editorial - print and online magazines.

And then there are the 'industry bloggers' (I'll give them that name) that were 'established press' but use blog media as a tool for editorializing.

Now you'll find that many of the now established CAD press started off life as users, just as our "Independent Bloggers" have. Many names you see in traditional CAD press publications are still users. So there is not much difference ultimately. However, many of the SolidWorks bloggers at SolidWorks World definitely have an inferiority complex as to their skills and acknowledgement as press.

Matt Lombard, a SolidWorks "independent blogger", wrote today in a posting about the same subject:
" We are uncouth, don’t spell check before posting, do not know how to use a semi-colon, but people are reading our stuff anyway. In fact, our stuff is creating much more of a stir than any of the conventional press stuff because of our biggest foibles: we have opinions and actually use the technology we write about."

Matt also goes on to point out the differences to other press that were at the event, which includes a number of CAD and financial analysts.
"Questions from these folks had a tendency more to the declarative than iterrogatory. They were always incomprehensible multi-part questions that I couldn’t even imagine who would find the answer even vaguely useful."

Don't worry Matt, the rest of us often feel the same way.

I predict that many of these bloggers that have been given their start through the encouragement of SolidWorks will find their way into being mainstream press at some point - if they decide to go that way. Either way, the industry is better off for having more CAD users and experts, with their perspective, than in not having them. And maybe comments like Matt's help the 'established press' understand where they might do better too.

Rach

Amy Rowell Announced as Editorial Director of Desktop Engineering

Amy Rowell, a well known editor and analyst in the CAD and PLM industries, has been announced as the editorial director of Desktop Engineering magazine. This is a great fit for both sides, given Amy's lengthy experience and qualifications in mechanical engineering, and with 20 or so years editorializing and analyzing the industry at publications such as Cadence Magazine, Computer Graphics World, Innovate Forum and as an analyst for Cyon Research.

This probably brings a lot of relief to the Desktop Engineering team who, we think, has been very hard pressed to compensate for the retirement/sabbatical of Tony Lockwood last year. They still did a bang up job, but the loss of that kind of expertise is always hard on the remaining team.

Since the birth of Amy's first child last year, from which she took some time off from the day-to-day hassle of squeezing news out of the industry, we are also glad to see her back in the market, and look forward to pestering the hell out of her for ed. opps.

Desktop Engineering is, as always, an excellent publication and we are continually keen to see the CAD industry publications grow and develop.

Tenlinks Acquires CADTalent web site

Our friend Roopinder Tara at Tenlinks.com last week announced that Tenlinks had acquired CADtalent.

This web site, founded by Tony Lillios and his OPENtalent team, provides thousands of CAD-related jobs across the industry, in clearly categorized vertical markets.

We feel this is a good combination for Tenlinks, and will provide the publishing group with a lot more page views (on which to sell ads) and more revenue from job postings. Go check it out

rach