Let's Take a Ride on the Hyperloop!

Have you heard of the Hyperloop? No, it's not a new roller-coaster at Cedar Point (the best amusement park for roller coasters in the US, in case you're wondering). The Hyperloop is a proposed transportation method deisgned by Elon Musk, creator of PayPal, and CEO of Tesla and SpaceX. Yes, he is a very creative guy. I was reading an article about the Hyperloop, and how a few people at Autodesk have imagined a few updates to the original design.

This innovative concept of how we might travel in the future is very intriguing. Imagine traveling in a tube at up to 700 MPH from San Francisco to Los Angeles in 30 minutes. These tubes could be strung all over the place and allow us to speed around from place to place very quickly. The folks at Autodesk are proposing carbon fiber to make the tubes lighter and stronger. In fact, they have some good ideas that might even make this kind of project feasible.

How about your business? Do you look at new technologies and think about how they can be used to make you more successful in the future? Or, do you spend most of your time running around fighting fires, and working over-time to push products out the door. It goes without saying that PLM will be required to support new technologies that transform your business.

What new technology are you studying to make your business better? There are many new ways of working that could have a tremendous impact on your future customers: the cloud, mobility, big data analysis, social PLM, and more. If you ignore these new opportunities, your competitors might get there before you.

Does it make sense to hurtle around in a tube? Would you be willing to try it? Remember, people scoffed at many technologies that we now take for granted:

"Radio has no future. Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible. X-rays will prove to be a hoax." -- William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, British scientist, 1899.

What do you think?

- Jim

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