GabiJack.com

Archive for September 18th, 2008

Thursday was a long day of presentations. I took lots of pictures and all kinds of notes. Ten pages of notes, to be precise… I feel I have so much that I want to say about this day, but, alas, I’m tired and it’s late here in Barcelona. My whole internal clock is completely messed up. This afternoon, after the presentations were all finished, I came up to my room to take a long nap. I slept all the way through dinner, then woke up a couple of hours ago and decided to take a look at the nearly 300 pictures I took today.  I selected a few of those pictures and put together a small slideshow.

I also put together a little video of a robot that was designed in SolidWorks and demoed today during one of the presentations.

You can be sure I’ll have a lot more to say about this day, but for now I leave you with these two small videos. Enjoy!

Wednesday night’s dinner at the Xalet was amazing and a whole new experience for me.  I must confess that I was feeling a bit out of place, among so many strangers, and that includes my fellow bloggers, since I had never seen them before in my life. Even more intimidating for me was the fact that, for some strange reason that I still don’t understand, I was sharing the same table with Bernard Charles, CEO of Dassault Systemes, as well as with Jeff Ray, CEO of DS SolidWorks. I was nervous at first, almost expecting that people of their stature would look down on the little people, such as me, but instead I found that, despite their power and (I guess) wealth, they were the nicest, most humble of all people you could ever meet, and that in every aspect of their life they are genuinely driven by an unselfish desire of improving the life of those around them, of generating change and progress for the community through their products. I’m glad I had this rare opportunity of spending time in their company, just having dinner and sharing a nice conversation, away from presentations and conferences, since those are the times when you learn the most about people.

Here you can see Bernard Charles. I apologize for the bad quality of the picture.

From left to right, Al Dean and Jeff Ray.

Also in the table were Al Dean, who is extremely nice and funny, Kenneth Wong (Executive Editor, Cadalyst), and Jeff Rowe, with whom I had a delightful conversation and a great time.

That night I was also introduced to several people I had only met before via email or phone, such as Matthew West, Laura Kozikowski, Marie Planchard and Kerri Dunne.

Here you have Matthew West, Devon Sowell and Brian (CADfanatic).

I’m sorry my pictures aren’t exactly great. I took a few other ones, but they turned out too dark. I tried to capture the magnificent view of the city at night, as it is seen from the peak of the Montjuic, where the restaurant is located, but, sadly my camera didn’t cooperate with me. That doesn’t take away from the experience, though.