With the introduction of the CSWE exam at SolidWorks World 2010 we decided to split up the CSWP event at SolidWorks World 2011 to have an exclusive CSWE event. This year we started the event at 6:30pm for CSWE's only and opened the event to CSWP's at 7:00pm.
Initially the plan was to have all the attendees walk the .6 mile distance to the venue where our event was being held. On the Saturday before the event however the plans changed. We met with the event planning staff and began the walk to the venue. About half way there it was decided that the walking route to the venue crossed too many busy streets so it was decided that busses would be provided instead. The only thing this really effected was that we had to reprint 600 copies of the event handout sheet that had walking directions on it! Instead we redid the flyer to give instructions about the bus schedule.
Originally we had planned to have some paintball shooting ranges set up that would allow people to shoot a paintball gun at some stationary targets. That process began a few weeks before the event with the making of some safety cables to make sure the guns could only be pointed at the targets, and not the attendees:
Of course even the best laid plans sometimes fail. It was discovered on Monday just after general session had ended that the shipment of paintball guns we were expecting on the Friday before the event, had been even further delayed and would not arrive until the morning after the CSWE/CSWP event! So what could we do? Improvise! We took a trip to a local Toys R Us and walked out with two shopping carts full of Nerf Dart Guns:
Lucikly we had plenty of celebrity stand-ins to shoot the Nerf guns at:
The venue itself was picked by our wonderful event staff ahead of time and they took care of all the decorations, food, and drink choices. We also once again had the guys from A/V Images set up two giant projection screens so we could show off a bunch of designs from CSWP's around the world:
Some additional shots of the venue during set up:
The last detail was to unbox 500 Nerf Dart Guns: (thanks Jenny)
And then all that was left was to welcome nearly 550 guests, and have a good time:
What a site it was to see hundreds or Nerf Darts being shot all over the place! The event as usual seemed to end just as fast as it started. Our goal was to have a fun party where everyone would get a chance to interact with some cool products designed in SolidWorks, and we think we were pretty successful.
So what's in store for next year in San Diego? Well all I can say is that planning is already underway and we're always looking for fun SolidWorks customers to feature, so let us know if you have something you think we could use!
It was an awesome event! Probably even more so with the Nerf guns than it would have been with the paintball guns...
They get better every year - I'm already looking forward to next year's event!
Posted by: Brian | February 11, 2011 at 03:39 PM