In line with traditions of COFES the Organizing Committee in coordination with Brad Holtz has specified six WGs. There will be two rounds (in total – 3 hours) each round includes three WGs that will be working in parallel during 1.5 hours. After these rounds are over, there will be a joint integrating round table + press-conference.

The following 7 working groups are planned.

1. News & trends in PLM/PDM

PLM is getting traction as a industry direction and becomes accepted as a business strategy by many customers. Nevertheless, there are lots of debates about what PLM is actually need to become - strategy, application, vision, platform etc. The discussion in this working group will be around what we see as the top challenges and opportunities for PLM in the coming decade:

— Challenges: Simplicity, Alternative Business Models, Openness, Beyond Engineering, noPLM
— Opportunities: Competition, Social Applications, Regulation and Sustainability, Cost

2. Intelligent Methods of Three-Dimensional Modeling in CAD

Creating and editing engineering data

History-based modeling has been the dominant CAD technology for many years; it is still widely used. Last years history-free (or direct) modeling becomes more robust and useful, and now CAD users can choose between two very viable and very different technologies. This workgroup will be a place for discussion how this choice impacts the intellectual property and product development process of customers.

3. Marketing and Advertizing in the Era of Global Social Networks

The question is what will be influence of the Internet and social networks on marketing.

4. CAD-training for future engineers

5. New business-models for engineering software

The key question in this discussion should be around "Risk" and "Trust". Customers are looking how to decrease risk in their software projects. PLM is a very risky one these days. Also "value proposition" is very un-trustfull. Customers don't see how current PLM vendors can provide a value using current business models.

6. New hardware technologies for engineering software

7. Perspectives of Building Information Modeling and its impact on AEC market

Building Information Modeling (BIM) is a process of generation and management of building/construction data during its lifecycle.

Everybody is kindly invited to give comments and propose more hot topics.
Please write directly to me.
Thank you,

David Levin, LEDAS Founder and CEO, Chairman of isicad-2010,
levin@ledas.com