The CAD Insider

GPU Technology Conference - But Seriously, Folks

SAN JOSE, CA, Sep 30, 2009 - Jen-Hsun Huang, CEO of NVIDIA, kicks off the sold-out GPU Technology Conference by telling to ignore him in the flesh but to focus instead on the 3D image of himself on the big screen. That should be no problem for the ubergeeks in the audience, who judging by the lush graphics clearly prefer fantasy to reality.

We are treated to an overly buxom fairy and a red fire truck that we are told is a zillion polygons.

NVIDIA's fairy, Dawn, introduced a few years ago as a technology preview, never seems to get old.

"A billion dollars later, i get some eye candy," jokes Jen-Hsun.

Ah, a self-deprecating CEO-- much appreciated over some stuffed shirt business type.

We also get CG images of bodies being flung against and through a wall. "I see so much joy that could be derived from this," says Jen-Hsun. Green water splashes around in an invisible box, drawing oohs and ahs from an audience that must appreciate the underlying mathematics. It doesn't look quite right to me -- the surface appears pockmarked, I think because it is based on thousands of balls -- a lot until you consider real life water is based on trillions of molecules. I realize I'm expecting too much...

It's physics-based, we are told, as if that is going to shut me up.

Lest NVIDIA be dismissed for being frivolous, Jen_Hsun steers our attention to more serious matters. What could be more serious than cancer? David Robinson, CEO of  TechniScan explains how NVIDIA's graphic speed has been instrumental in analyzing data from breast cancer scans. "Any cancer can be cured -- if it is detected early enough."

DIY Hits CAD Show Coverage

It what seems to be an attempt at Do It Yourself, we were treated all last week to frequent reports from the Siemens PLM analyst event from a member of the corporate communications staff. If you follow Siemens' social media expert Dora Smith on Twitter, you got a play by play of the event: who was speaking and their subject. You may even have seen Dora's interview with Tony Affuso, CEO of Siemens PLM, and found out that Tony golf game was an "embarrassment."

Yeah, I'm jealous. I haven't met Tony yet. I might have interviewed him for our TopTen Questions series.

Though press and bloggers were not invited, analysts were. That was no big surprise about the press being ignored. After all, SolidWorks had already placed press second to bloggers during the v2010 introduction.

Though some grumbling was heard, most of the old school press are resigned to their fate. The days of being flown around the country, being wined and dined by CAD royalty and listened to as if you had a monopoly on wisdom because it said "editor" on your name badge -- that's SO over. Nowadays, you have to produce. SolidWorks and Autodesk have discovered that they get much more bang for their buck with bloggers. New to the game, impassioned about the product, dazzled by the attention of those on high who make the software they are lucky to be playing with, a software vendor can expect serious amounts of positive ink to flow out of the heady experience of a free trip to headquarters, an invitation to a conference expenses paid, being the first on the block with the latest release, etc. -- all the stuff  we old editors and reporters take for granted.

Siemens PLM has little in the way of a blogger community. But they have Dora, a one-woman force. She may well have melted her smart phone keys with her Tweets. Still, a bit of variety would have been nice. Analysts are important, especially for public companies, but I heard not a peep from them from the show. I'm sure they are saving the good stuff for their paying clients or for one of their thousand dollar reports.

If more CAD vendors insist on the DIY approach, I'm going to miss the spice that varied reporting types can add. I already miss Ralph's pithy comments as he updates his blog during the keynotes. I can imagine Matt telling Dan Staples on what it would take to make Solid Edge take off like a rocket, Martyn commenting on the interoperability (or lack of) between Solid Edge and UG, or Deelip cornering a product manager on Synchronous Technology trying to handle complex shapes.

Bloggers Go to War - Readers Lose

Last week, I was reading a post by an industry observer. This was a person I respect for his sharp mind and his encyclopedic knowledge. He has been in the CAD industry forever. A true CAD insider. The subject of his post interested me -- and by similarity, also the subscribers of TenLinks Daily. But I grew more dismayed as I read on as this post was peppered with jabs at another blogger. So frequent and pointed were the jabs that by the time I read to the end, I had forgotten what the article was about. I wanted to reread it but was pressed by a deadline. Many other articles had to be approved for insertion into the newsletter. With so many blogs, independent sites... plus vendor sites also publishing their material online, we are facing a deluge of material. In the early years of TenLinks, we used it all. But these days, rather than overwhelm our readers with a yard long daily newsletter, we have taken to eliminating links to articles that are may be irrelevant, uninteresting, insignificant, poorly written, hard to read... and in this case, maybe just a bit too personal.

Had I been an old school editor and these were articles I had commissioned, I would have edited the personal stuff out. But in my new job, I don't have that luxury. I can use it or not.

I'm not saying bloggers shouldn't write personal stuff. Heck, that is what blogs are for, right? You can write about your breakfast, your kid's birthday party, your feud with another blogger. Fine. It's America. We have free speech. Get it out of your system. I write personal stuff in mine sometimes. But I have to sort out what is going to be useful and/or interesting for my subscribers. So for their sake, I have to have standards.

Or am I being too high minded? The week before I didn't use an article that had a curse word in the title. But I only have to look at the magazines by the supermarket checkout to be reminded that negative material sells magazines. Being shocking sells. Maybe I should publish beach photos of CAD celebrities who have fallen off their diet, who got really drunk at the last conference, who is getting a divorce. There's no shortage... 

It makes me cringe but are you Interested?

Make the Call - Is the Old CAD Press Dead?

It's been painful couple of weeks monitoring the online space in the wake of the SolidWorks 2010 launch. It was bad enough that SolidWorks let the beta testers (almost all of them bloggers, it seems) scoop the CAD press but then it turned vicious as everyone wanted to pile on.

Examples:

• One popular blogger essentially called the CAD press a bunch of old, tired complainers used to being pampered by vendors but who do nothing but ask stupid questions and are loath to use the very software they are supposed to be covering.
• A SolidWorks blogger wholeheartedly extols the virtues of bloggers as the new media in contrast to traditional CAD
• Even a CAD journalist turned on his own, stating that the CAD press ought to stop whining. Become a beta tester or shut up.

There were a few weak peeps in response from the CAD press, most in the form of one line responses in the comment sections of the attacking blog posts or on Twitter. In the old days, such attacks would have been met with a barrage of withering prose.  A year ago a debate raged between bloggers and press in which one of the CAD press compared bloggers to less evolved beings. Bloggers were criticized as being barely able to dot their i's or spell, much less conform to "journalistic practices." I'm sure the bloggers were themselves puzzled at the lack of response. Like sadistic kids who are poking an old dog with sticks and wondering why it wasn't fighting back. Was everyone on vacation? Or worse?

Sadly, it appears the era of CAD press as we know it has expired. The SolidWorks press fiasco only puts a date stamp on it. There is no longer a functioning healthy body composed of members of CAD press. Many of the practicing CAD journalists have scattered, some wandering looking for work, abandoned by boarded up publishing houses. The last US CAD-dedicated magazine has stopped printing. I'm trying to think of who I know that makes a living writing only about CAD....

Meanwhile, the amount of information on the web is so great that the TenLinks organization can hardly keep up. Our list of bloggers is the biggest list we have -- and it's growing. Our editors find tons of articles every day -- as readers of our daily newsletter know -- and that's after we weed out stories of travel, what was for breakfast, etc. The number of articles from "traditional" sources is steadily shrinking.

So it's quite reasonable for a company like SolidWorks to court the "new media" and placing a higher value on them. They are SO much more productive (in terms of content generated). As bloggers themselves point out, they still have the passion for the product. They are eager -- not jaded. They are (mostly) not even cynical. They can definitely run circles around most any editor or journalist when using the software. Maybe they can't all form perfect sentences but I doubt if their audience even notices. We now have CAD experts talking directly to CAD users. The middlemen of publishing have been removed -- or at the very least, marginalized.

Will the CAD press be missed? The new media is good but are there things it's not good at? Is there no one out there who appreciates a well crafted, well written article? Who would pay to have it written? Would anyone pay to read it? Can the CAD press be revived? Should they be? If so, how can the members of the CAD press be useful to the community? Will the new media become the old media? Or is that already happening?