Any of you that like weaselling around for a freebie might be interested in this competition being run by SolidWorks to fly one lucky person to SolidWorks World in San Diego, California.
How to win? Tell them a sob story:
“We want to know why you want to come to SolidWorks World 2012, what the benefit would be for you and your business, and what you hope to achieve with the knowledge you would gain at the show.
“The more intriguing the post, the more likely you are to be chosen.”
Here are our tips on how to win:
– An emotional tale of woe:
It works on XFactor, America’s Got Talent, Britain’s Got Vague Levels Of Talent, LA Ink, and any other modern day TV show – start weeping now as you recall any bizarre family illness/death of a pet/time something dropped out of the fridge and you had to clean it up, and apply it to why SWW has always been a lifelong dream.
– You’d love to be a charity volunteer:
They also want you to blog from the event on their behalf, so express an interest in working for gratis and choose some big words from the thesaurus to show you’re literate. [Frankly I’d have done it for the airfare and someone covering the cost of my mini-bar, but hey-ho…]
– Save the dolphins and/or fluffy creatures:
Contestants are asked ‘what is the most significant design challenge in your region’ and ‘what do you hope to learn or do at SWW’. Go big or go home – talking about the badly designed bins on the local housing estate won’t win you fans – explain that you want to help out your local dolphin pod from being driven to extinction. The competition is being judged in the US, so they’ll have no idea where Derby is…
– Go internal:
Another criterion is who you’d like to meet at SWW. Now you could go for a head-honcho such as CEO Berty Sicot; a VP of R&D like Gian Paolo Bassi, or a software guru like Fielder Hiss. However, we’d suggest you go for someone more low key to show you’ve done your homework. A quick trawl through Linkedin should find you some tech geek to worship, or most profitably a member of the marketing team to woo/push your entry up the pile.
– For God’s sake, don’t be from Quebec:
As if just to prove that French Canadians are unloved by their ‘proper’ French cousins that run the Dassault show, you cannot enter if you are from Quebec. The same applies if you are from the USA, Brazil or China (good news, as it removes one and-a-half billion potential contestants).
So what are you waiting for? You can enter here – the competition closes this Thursday – and you might even bump into one of DEVELOP3D who will be covering the event.
