We covered this a little while ago, but Autodesk is expanding its Autodesk Clean Tech Partner Program to European “clean technology companies working to address some of the world’s most pressing environmental challenges.” Basically, if your company is working in this area, you can get hold of a software grant that gives you up to five licenses of Inventor, Showcase, Vault, NavisWorks, Revit or Alias.

Full program information, including application process details for the Clean Tech software grant in Europe, is available at www.autodesk.co.uk/cleantech or (or here if you’re in Germany) - Quick Tip: look for the box on the right-hand side of the web-site.

Sample of entry for this year’s competiton

LG Mobile Phones has again partnered up with crowdSPRING and Autodesk to hold its competition to define the future of mobile communication.  Starting on March 15th, LG Mobile Phones will give consumers the chance to design their vision of the next revolutionary LG mobile phone and compete for more than $80,000 in prizes. The competition will award over 40 winners.  The first place winner will be awarded $20,000, one Wacom Intuos4 medium tablet, and Autodesk industrial design software.  The second place winner will be awarded $10,000 and Autodesk SketchBook Pro software, and the third place winner will be awarded $5,000 and Autodesk SketchBook Pro software.  To reward as many people as possible in the name of creativity, LG will also be giving out a whopping 37 honorable mentions at $1,000 each.

This year’s competition marks the inaugural participation of Russell Bobbitt, a world renowned movie prop master.  Bobbitt has worked on a variety of visually stunning films such as Star Trek, Iron Man and Iron Man 2.  He recently received the prestigious “Behind the Camera” prop master award for his work on the first Iron Man film.  Bobbitt will serve as a guest judge to reward one contestant’s cutting-edge design with the Prop Master’s Choice award.  The contestant’s design will then be created into a non-working mock-up that could wind up in Bobbitt’s next blockbuster film.  The Prop Master’s Choice winner will also receive $3,000 plus Autodesk SketchBook Pro software. Autodesk will supply participants with a free 15-day trial of SketchBook Pro, a paint and drawing application for use on the Mac or PC.

When

Eligibility: Any U.S. resident (citizen or green card holder) that is 18 years (or age of majority in state of residence) and older
Start and End Dates: The competition begins on March 15, 2010, at 12 a.m. PST and ends on April 26, 2010, at 9:00 a.m. PST
Winners will be announced on May 14, 2010 at www.crowdspring.com/LG/winners.

The Prize

• First Place: $20,000 Cash Award + 1 Wacom Intuos4 medium tablet + Autodesk industrial design software
• Second Place: $10,000 Cash Award + Autodesk SketchBook Pro software
• Third Place: $5,000 Cash Award + Autodesk SketchBook Pro software
• Prop Master’s Choice: $3,000 Cash Award + Autodesk SketchBook Pro software + 1 non-working concept mock-up creation
• 37 Honorable Mentions: $1,000 Cash Award

Where

Official rules can be found at www.crowdspring.com/LG

Martyn opens his magic box for our favourite Italian gentleman (Dr. Sandro Sozzi) - causing obvious delight. The contents of the box, however, remains a mystery.

We’re just past the Ides of March, the month is half done and we’re rapidly approaching April. Other than being 1,066th anniversary of Julius Caesar’s death, this also means that COFES, or the Congress on the Future of Engineering Software is on the horizon.Held each year around the 15th of April at the Scottsdale Plaza Resort, COFES has become of one of the leading events of the product development software industry events to attend. It’s a heady mix of both technical sessions, breakouts with industry analysts, round table discussions and presentations from all manner of ‘visionaries.’ Each year’s events has a theme associated with it, this year’s tag line being Best-practices aren’t good enough, with the team behind the event asking “What can we do to make our customers more effective innovators?” and “How can we innovate in the development of better practices?”

But as I said last year, COFES for me, isn’t about the keynotes, isn’t about the breakout sessions and it certainly isn’t about sitting around a table and discussing the problems of ease of use and data translation. What it IS about however, is a single place to meet with some of the brightest minds in the industry, catch up on what they’re up to, what they’re working on and discuss it in an open environment. All too often software vendors work in isolation and right so.

Blake Courter, one of the founders of SpaceClaim, invites 35 random people into his hotel room to emote about direct editing - not for the first time..

After all, these are profit making organisations which have their own customer base to protect, their own profit levels to maintain - that’s how business works. But at COFES, for some reason (be it the sunshine, the beer/wine or the sing-a-long on the last night) industry executives seem more open to discuss what their plans are, what they’re doing with both users, we in the media and the world as a whole. you get a better picture of where different vendors are at, what’s in their roadmap when its put in the immediate context of the industry as a whole. COFES is also about face to face connections - something that’s incredibly valuable even in today’s hyper connected, social media led world.

As part of the proceedings, the organisation behind COFES Cyon Research, are conducting two survey of users and the industry as a whole and I’d encourage you to take the time to fill out the surveys and give your input - this information is distributed at the event and much made available to those that participate. The first is the Market Outlook survey, which should take 5 minutes to whizz through - This will give a good an idea of what people are expecting from the year ahead and compared to last year, should provide interesting reading. The second, and the more interesting, is a more in-depth study of users of software tools for design and engineering and will take about 20 minutes to complete.

The COFES web-site is found here, but there’s also a series of interviews being conducted by the rather fabulous and always dapper Kenneth Wong over at the Desktop Engineering blog so have a look-see there. If you’re heading out to COFES, drop us a line and we’ll meet up. Martyn and myself can usually be found, somewhere at the back, sniggering slightly when the more ‘aged’ industry pundits start rambling about “ease of use and running something on a mini-vac and how these kids don’t know how hard it was.” As evidenced by Mr. Day on one of his less lyrical rants:

It’s been a while since I caught up with what Vuuch has been upto since it launched its social-media-collaborative-informal- tool last year and things are progressing nicely. As Josh Mings wrote in his review of the system last year:

There’s a critical metamorphosis about to change the way we communicate during design. You may sense it with each email you receive, each search you perform, and within the meetings where everyone scurries to make notes. This transformation is about moving critical design discussions into your design tools, making it a coordinated effort across the design team and into web interfaces where anyone can become a part of the process. The catalyst for this is Vuuch and it’s set to affect the whole landscape of how and where we discuss design.

I just got a message on twitter from Chris Williams, CEO of Vuuch, telling me about a webinar that they’re holding later this month. What caught my eye was a sentence on the invite page. It read:

Learn how Vuuch improves project execution while delivering product liability, compliance and regulatory requirements without forcing people to change how they work

I was curious as to how the system has progressed and how Chris and his team are looking to solve these particular problems, so I got some answers.

Chris WIlliams: Working habits (you know, the way shit actually gets done) have gone from a highly structured and heavily documentation based approach (SOPs and lots of paper work) to a very unstructured approach where now very little of what was done or how you did something is documented (well maybe it is fragmented in your inbox, but good luck putting it back together again).  There are many drivers to this:

• Our love affair with email
• Distributed organizations
• Organizational empowerment (push decisions into the organization)
• Shorter cycle times
• And on and on…  

The customer has two big problems that they need to solve and they need to do so within a cycle that is dramatically reduced:

• Project Execution – Reduce cycle time and increased electronic communication has created a negative situation with respect to how a project is managed.  This is not a project planning problem but this is a project execution problem (see attached ppt). This is a work management issue.  Who is doing what and who else are they connected with and how do I keep people aware.
• Compliance (call it what you want, compliance, regulatory or liability) – All regulations today are focused on how you did something.  For example the FDA medical device DHF regulations want to know what and who and they are not interested in the resulting versions.  PLM is very good at telling you what A was and what B was and what C is, but PLM has no idea of how you went from one to the other and why. Liability based regulation is interested in validation down to a detailed level, what issue was defined, who contributed, what solutions were proposed, how did you pick the solution and what validation was done to determine the fix did not change the stated performance of the product.  You can look at this from a law suit perspective as well.  Who did what (this is why there are electronic forensic experts now – you know the people who can find what everyone expects is deleted).  

Vuuch delivers to both of these because “Vuuch knows” the execution plan.  Vuuch manages what happens.  Vuuch knows how each person on the team is related to each component of the product.  This is the essence of solving both problems stated above. 

When we first looked at it, there was a basic Desktop Client as well as a SolidWorks and Pro/E plug-in. Things have moved on apace and there are currently plug-ins and workflows for MS Office, Pro/Engineer, SolidWorks, AutoCAD, Adobe PDF and a Desktop client. With this and other things Vuuch are working on, now would be a good time to sit in on the webinar and find out. it’s being held on the 25th of March at 10 EDT. Registration and further details are found here.

Further reading:

• Google Wave - the end of email?
• Josh Mings reviews Vuuch
• Josh Takes a look at Vuuch V1
• Social media and CAD
• vuuch.com: Applying social media to product development?

There’s also a presentation by Chris at Mass Innovation Nights (http://massinnovationnights.com/) from earlier this year that’s work a gander - and I’m glad ot say the camera work is even sketchier than mine: