COFES (Congress on The Future of Engineering Software) is changing its location and transforming with a new leadership team. If you never heard about COFES, check it out. Founded 20 years ago with a vision of having one-on-one interaction and building a community. Read more here about COFES story:
COFES was founded on the idea that one-on-one interaction and the building of community are the most valuable functions of an industry forum. COFES eschews the distractions of a trade show floor and the formality of executive presentations for a comfortable, casual atmosphere consisting of large and small group discussions with the most influential players and most innovative minds of the software world.
The three founders of COFES, Yares, Dr. Joel Orr, and Brad Holtz, originally became friends through industry conferences. The idea for COFES sprang from a casual discussion itself, between Yares and Orr, on their desire to assemble the presidents of CAD firms in such a context, provoking a free exchange of ideas among people who have both the vision and the connections turn ideas into reality.
I can say that the vision worked and for the last 20 years. It is a place where you can come and have an informal discussion with leads of the engineering software community. I’ve heard a funny description of the name COFES – CAD Old Friends Every Spring by Jon Hirschtick.
The event is transforming under the new leadership of COFES institute. This year event is moving from Scottsdale, AZ to Bay Area. Check out more on the event website. The agenda is shaping and you can check it here. Check out sessions.
The topic of the event is one of my favorite topics – the impact of technology on engineering software.
The COFES Institute is pleased to announce the 20th annual COFES event. The COFES 2019 theme will center on the impact of technology convergence on engineering and the engineering software ecosystem. For the first time, the event will be held in Silicon Valley at the Hotel Nia, April 7-10, 2019.
Some sessions are traditional at COFES like a Brief View from Wall Street by Jay Vleeschhouwer, Research Analyst at Griffin Securities.
Here are few interesting topics that caught my attention when I was scrolling agenda page.
Making Ugly Less Ugly where Marc Halpern of Gartner will speak about Engineering Modernization.
Engineering Modernization. The Good, The Bad, and Making the Ugly Less Ugly – Today’s engineering infrastructure evolved over decades in an adaptive emergent way. While business leaders invest to achieve disruptive competitive advantage, this objective is more elusive than they anticipated. This presentation shares a root-cause analysis of the challenges of disruptive change and explores the system-of-systems thinking needed to orchestrate technology, people, and processes for continuous improvement.
Another one is Engineering Acquisition Trend presented by Ralph Verrilli, Managing Director at Madison Park Group
Merger and Acquisition Trends in Engineering Software – Ralph Verrilli, Managing Director with Madison Park Group, an investment bank which focuses on CAD, Simulation and PLM, will be speaking about the trends and drivers of acquisitions in the engineering software space, as well as the factors which will drive M&A in PLM and engineering software in the next few years.
Jeff Allen, Director of Operations Engineering at Facebook will talk about The Power of the integrated environment in a hyperscale business.
Facebook Infrastructure designs, develops and builds most of its hardware Infrastructure and data centers. Operations Engineering is responsible for transitioning product development into production and delivery to our data centers. We are in the process of developing an integrated environment across field failures, manufacturing testing and yields, predictive analytics, hardware reliability and product data management. In this presentation we will discuss the challenges and benefits of building an integrated environment.
What is my conclusion? COFES has grown up and separated from his parents and founders. I’m looking to meet old COFES friends and a new format and location of the events. It will be interesting to see how COFES institute will preserve a spirit of COFES, but bring a new reality of engineering software development community. If you’re coming to COFES, I will look forward to seeing you there. Otherwise, stay tuned for my blog. Just my thoughts…
Best, Oleg
Disclaimer: I’m co-founder and CEO of OpenBOM developing cloud-based bill of materials and inventory management tool for manufacturing companies, hardware startups and supply chain. My opinion can be unintentionally biased.
