Is PLM Just a Bunch of Old Guys?

The recent CIMdata PLM Roadmap saw great attendance, and great speakers. One of the topics brought up by several speakers was the lack of young people at this conference. I don't think this is any different from most PLM conferences around the world. If you look at who attends these conferences, it is mostly 40+ years old guys. I can speak from experience, since I am one of those old guys.

Many of the new technologies that will impact PLM in the future, like mobility, cloud, social, and others have NOT been embraced by the "old" guys at these conferences. When asked for a show of hands of how many people would be tweeting at the conference, about 6 people raised their hands. Overall, there were only 18 people that tweeted at the conference; there were 300+ attendees!

The question I have to ask is: "how can we get more young people involved in PLM?" If you looked at most PLM conferences, you would get the idea that only old guys are interested in this technology. This is far from the truth, especially when you consider how much technology is used by younger people today. But, how can we get their inputs into what we are doing with PLM?

I don't know that answer, but I think it is VERY important that we figure out how to engage with our younger engineers and PLM technology users to help us understand how new technologies can provide the PLM environment of the future.

What do you think?

Jim