It starts with a phone call from Peter, an good friend and industry marketing wizard. “Hello Alistar, would you like to go to Korea?” Of course the answer is a massive yes. I put it in our shared calender on the DEVELOP3D server farm and get the immediate reply from Martyn. Two words.
“Korea? Bastard.”
So, six months later, I’ve flown around 8,00 miles, changed time zone twice, been to Dubai for cheese on toast and a beer, and here I am. In Gyeongju, South Korea. Why am I here? The answer is thus.
I’ve been invited for two things, both relating to Delcam, masters of all things CAD/CAM. Firstly, Delcam are holding its Asian Technical Summit. The company traditionally holds three of these across the globe (Europe, North America and Asia), collecting journalist and media to give them a briefing on how the business is performing, its plans for the future and to show off both its customers and its range solutions (which unlike many so called PLM providers) actually does provide tools to get you from concept to production and beyond. That’s the next two days and we’ll learn (me, by sitting here and you, by reading, hopefully) what the company has planned. Then once that’s done, it’s to the Korean Delcam User Group Meeting.
This is a special year, being the 20th such event and I’ve heard stories about the scale of this event before, but this year should be something else. In the next few days, over 1,000 (probably 1,300) Delcam users within South Korea will congregate at the event to learn about the future of products which are core to their working methodologies and gain some insight into what’s coming next.
Now, consider the size of the population of South Korea that’s around a 7th of the US. When you attend your typical CAD user event, you get a mix of resellers, employees and others (including us press/media types), so the number of attendees usually looks larger than is truly the case if you’re looking for a true representation of user acceptance. the Hankook Delcam (as the company is known here) has managed to cram over a thousand users into an event tailored to a single set of software applications. That is quite impressive and I can’t wait to find out more.
In the meantime, I’ve been off exploring the local history and getting into all manner of escapades so far involving rogue taxi cabs, buddhist monasteries and wondering how lax it is of me not to have learned even the most basic of Korean for this trip – like “Please. Can you take me to my hotel, my feet hurt.” Tomorrow’s another day. Should be fun. Stay tuned.
