COFES 2013 – Notable discussions and moon photoshoots

I’ve been attended COFES 2013 earlier last week. For those of you not familiar with the event, navigate your browser to the following link. COFES stands for The Congress on the Future of Engineering Software. Annual COFES is taking place in the same location every year in April. You can see a complete agenda of COFES 2013 here. The key two elements of COFES are people and discussions. You want to navigate to this link to see who attended COFES this year.

There are few sessions and discussion topics that I specially liked. One of them was Round-robin on computing future. It was fascinating to see a unique blend of presenters clearly representing three different generation of developers: Mike Riddle (the orignal author of AutoCAD), Jon Hirschtick (co-founder of SolidWorks) and Kai Backman (co-founder of TinkerCAD and Airstone Labs).

I had a chance to speak to Simon Floyd of Microsoft about Windows 8, multiple device strategies and PLM applications. Microsoft was one of the dominant at COFES 2013 with the technology suites presenting Windows 8 and CAD/PLM apps running at least on 10-12 different devices. In the world of multiple devices, multiple applications to see what Microsoft is trying to accomplish with their Windows 8 strategy was very interesting.

Another interesting discussion lead by Siemens PLM was about development of eCars. No, it wasn’t about how Siemens is going to compete with Mercedes, BMW and Audi. Siemens is introducing the approach of using plug-in electrical cars energy to optimize electrical power network in a country like Germany. One of most shocking examples was a plan to update car software when car is moving from one European country to another to follow specific standards and environment.

Esther Dyson keynote and Q&A was impressive. The surprising topic was to learn about the fact Esther speaks Russian and investing in Russian companies like Yandex and some others. My favorite topic of simplification and cost came in the discussion when talking about earlier FedEx innovation – transport was cheaper than complexity.

Finally, the discussion with intriguing name “EoL 4 Email” actually morphed into the conversation about the future of email. The conclusion – email is not going to die, but to transform into online messaging system with rich content delivery and contextual actions. I probably will come with a separate post about this.

There is no way you can participate in all conversations and discussions at COFES. Discussions are everywhere – in hallways and walkways; around the tables and in the evening under the stars. Below few photos I’ve made during COFES Evening Under the Stars.