As COVID hit the world, the PLM industry, like many other industries, made an interesting trajectory from traditional (physical) events to very large online conferences and a huge number of various online webinars, video recordings, and digital media. Just before COVID19 shut down the entire world, I attended the PI PLMx event in London (virtually) and shared my thoughts about the future of PLM events in my article – Are PLM conferences dead? Later in 2020, I published another article – PLM events go digital. What to expect from your next virtual PLM conference.
The last 20 months were a very interesting period to think about PLM events. I attended dozens of online events and skipped probably hundreds of invitations to a variety of webinars and sessions. There is a huge opportunity to learn online. I’ve been learning about what and how to make online events interesting and beneficial for your customers. After being exposed to a waterfall of events and online presentations, I decided to plunge into an online event experience and move from watching to making an online event on my own.
At OpenBOM (disclaimer- I’m co-founder and CEO), we partner with Share PLM (shareplm.com) to deliver an online PLM event to share our experience and knowledge in building and implementing modern SaaS PLM systems. The idea of the event – Demystifying Modern PLM was to bring four perspectives on modern PLM from technological, sales, product, and adoption standpoints. Such a multi-faceted approach should help a large group of people in the industry to get a balanced view of what is modern PLM approach is, how it is different from legacy monolithic applications, and what steps can be made to explore modern SaaS PLM and learn what can be a value of this new approach for each organization.
I’m excited to share the results of the event. Read more about the event and each session.
At OpenBOM, we realized the importance and magnitude of the changes in the technology and manufacturing industry. As we’ve been developing new products, communicating with our customers, and helping them build solutions, we learned that it is extremely important to learn and understand the multi-faceted aspects of modern PLM environments. And this is how we came up with the idea of OpenBOM and Share PLM event – Demystifying Modern PLM.
Here are the links to each session. Inside you can find slide decks for each session. Below you can check the video recording of each session.
The entire event was a very interesting experience. We all learned a lot together organizing our thoughts, making presentations, and recording. I’d like to say a big thank you to our partner at this event – Share PLM and personally to Helena Gutierrez that helped us organize it. Special thank you to our host and IT g-d Heather Long. Also, big thanks to OpenBOM’s Team – Chris Chaulk (Chief Architect), Steve Hess (Director Of User Experience), and Jared Haw (Business Executive) for taking the time and joining the event sessions.
What is my conclusion?
The opportunity to share knowledge in PLM is huge. We are learning it every day at OpenBOM discovering tons of opportunities to help people to make the real digital transformation – to escape from their pre-digital document-excel-based world and switch to a new world of connected data, contextual information, and intelligence. The road towards the digital future is long, but the future is coming faster than we think. It is a time for every PLM professional to check around and learn about what is coming. Business consulting often uses the famous quote attributed to Wayne Gretzky – skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been. While there is a lot of controversy around this phrase, the general premise, that you must always anticipate the next move of the puck and the players in the game, still holds a lot of weight. It seems that this advice rings especially true in PLM business and technology as a whole, both of which are changing very fast these days. Just my thoughts…
Best, Oleg
Disclaimer: I’m co-founder and CEO of OpenBOM developing a digital network-based platform that manages product data and connects manufacturers, construction companies, and their supply chain networks. My opinion can be unintentionally biased.