I’ve been running the working group “New Trends in PLM” on COFES Russia / isicad-2010. I had no idea how actually the working group discussion will go. The format of this working group and number of people was unusual and a little different from original small discussion groups (7-10 people). This group meeting happened in the main COFES conference room and include about 25-30 people. I run this round-table in Russian. However, few people attended discussion using synchronous translation.
Initial list of topics I prepared, was too long for 1 hour discussion. Nevertheless, during the preparation few months ago, I put the following (very ambitious) list of topics to be discussed on this session.
— PLM Challenges for 2010s
— Social Software impact on PLM
— New models of data management in CAD/PLM
— PLM and sustainability
— PLM and Digital Prototyping
— PLM and BIM – Common Roots or Common Future?
Frankly saying, I had no hope that we’ll be able to discuss all these topics. So, I decided to prepare my kick-off presentation for the discussion forum with only two topics:
(1) Social Software impact on PLM;
(2) PLM and Digital Prototyping.
You can see my kickoff slides in the presentation below.
However, as I expected, we actually got to discuss only one topic: Social Software Impact on PLM. The discussion was very interesting. It was good to see different opinions, especially coming from opposite sides of the planet: Russia and USA. The most important topics that were raised:
1. The value of social networks
2. Security and control
3. Productivity
Some of the people told me about the major difference between social networking in Western countries and in Russia. I want to quote Olga Kalyagina’s blog after COFES. You can read this quote in my personal translation:
Probably, Oleg rarely visits Russia. In western counties, social network – search for opportunities for business and social activities, and in Russia people are looking for school sweethearts and student drinking companions. Serious research was done about that. Therefore, the verdict of the Russian-speaking members of the working group was simple: to allow social networks, but made them strictly limited and controlled.
Unfortunately, we lost one point in this discussion. The most focus was about social network usage. This is one side of social technologies. Another side, is actually technologies associate with social networking and everything that we call Web 2.0. The fundamental internet technologies that were significantly improved over the past decade, in my view, are going to to impact development of future PLM products. I had a chance to write a lot about it on my blog during the past few months. So, to compensate the discussion on COFES-Russia, just to point on the following post on my blog that can provide good intro points into PLM and social: Social PLM Options.
So, what is my conclusion? The discussion was excellent! As I mentioned earlier in my post (COFES: Russian Style!), the biggest problem on COFES Russia was the absence of time. So, my belief is that next COFES Russia will be planned slower and will include enough time for discussions and disputes. In short, it needs to be COOOOFES-like…
Best, Oleg
