LEDAS announced the formation of Advisory Board

Together with the whole LEDAS team, I am grateful to the well-known actors of the engineering software market who kindly agreed to become members of the newly formed LEDAS advisory board:

• Ken Amann, Executive Consultant and (previously) Director of Research at CIMdata
• Francis Bernard, Founder and First President of Dassault Systèmes, awarded as being the “Inventor of CATIA”
• Brad Holtz, President & CEO, Cyon Research Co-Founder, COFES Chief Strategy Officer and Chairman, The Center for Understanding Change
• Deelip Menezes, Blogger, Founder and CEO of SYCODE, Co-Founder and CTO of Print3D Corporation
• Oleg Shilovitsky, Blogger, Independent Consultant, Founder and CEO of Inforbix

For more information (biographies, links...), please see this page of LEDAS.com . 

Why COFES? Today ASCON knows the answer

Look at the passage from a recent press-release  of Lightworks:

 SHEFFIELD, UK (9 August 2011) - Lightworks, the world's leading supplier of rendering solutions for developers of advanced 3D computer graphics software, has today announced their partnership with ASCON, a developer and integrator of professional CAD/AEC/PLM solutions.

   ASCON, one of the first CAD developers within the Russian market, produces the KOMPAS -3D modelling software sold to over 40,000 customers all over the world. ASCON has licensed the Lightworks Artisan product and will be offering their customers a plug-in to this from KOMPAS-3D. ASCON will become the first company in Russia to sell an Artisan-based product when they release in September...

The case itself is ordinary for the global market but note that Russian software companies were so far typically inclined to do everything in-house. This can be explained by several reasons: survival of Soviet mental and actual isolation, references to Russian industry specifics, lack of international communication and foreign language skills, side-effect of really good high tech education and competence that in contradition with business and common sense prompt to believe that "we can do everything ourselves and better than any others"... During couple recent years ASCON seems to clearly overcome this defect and is intensively trying to be included into the global market with its specialization of labor. I think this is a clear sign of ASCON's maturity.    

Now look at the post by a very popular Russian blogger cadovod - Oleg Zykov - who is  the manager for innovation projects at ASCON (nice and meaningful position, isn't it?): 

When in my blog I promptly reported the visit of our ASCON delegation to COFES 2011, some readers justly reproached me: where are business issues? it looks like COFES is something which enabled you to visit Hollywood! Then Vladimir Malukh (LEDAS-isicad) rightly pointed out that COFES is not for spectators, it is for participants. Today I am at last able to tell you about one of the results of the ASCON attendance of COFES 2010: it is about our contract with Lightworks...

I can assure you that the agreement with Lightworks is not the only one ASCON brought from Arizona.

As for LEDAS and isicad, we are definitely aware about unique importance of COFES events: Vladimir Malukh (LEDAS Director on engineering consulting) in 2009 and Dmitry Ushakov (LEDAS CEO) in 2011 were among the participants,  see a COFES report of Dmitry who came back from Arizona also not empty-handed. Moreover, we have organized in Novosibirsk three COFES-like events - isicad 3-days multi-vendor forums (2004, 2006, 2008). 

And in September 2010 I was very happy to have a lucky opportunity of combining great COFES experience of Brad Holtz with isicad popularity in Russia: we have prepared and held in Moscow a COFES-Russia seminar combined with a one-day isicad event (NB: Oleg Zykov made there a presentation about ASCON's practical results on cloud-based KOMPAS 3D). 

There in Moscow, Brad has remarkably presented both the COFES idea as well as his unique personal competence and charisma. (At the picture - opening of the Moscow event: in a moment Brad will put a Russian fur hat on a cactus, a symbol of Arizona).

The presence of Russians at COFES has thereafter multiply increased and in future will likely increase more. Besides Arizona, people seem to be eager to attend next regional COFES which may be held in Russia or somewhere around... 

Russians in Arizona, April 2011:

Oleg Zykov, Dmitry Ushakov, Galina Chernyak (CSD, Executive Director), Maksim Bogdanov (ASCON, CEO), Vladimir Panchenko (ASCON, Chief Analyst).

@levin_david        (English)

@TheDavidLevin  (Russian)

How COFES-Russia and Autodesk Moscow Forum were prepared

Lobby bar of the Borodino hotel: Vladimir Malukh, Deelip Menezes, Oleg Shilovitsky, David Levin, Brad Holtz. Reflections on the fate of the world market of CAD/PLM

Deelip really loves the Moscow subway. His post about it looks like a poem.

Brad Holtz and Oleg Shilovitsky also love the Moscow subway, at least on Sunday when it's not overcrowded

Brad Holtz explains Oleg Shilovitsky a link between A.Pushkin and engineering software.

Brad Holtz is pondering over his forthcoming presentation at the Autodesk Moscow Forum. He had just listened to the recommendations of Anastasia Morozova, Field Marketing Area Team Manager Russia and CIS

Deelip, just do it!

Join Deelip Menezes to attend COFES-Russia and isicad-2010 in Moscow

Deelip's yesterday post in his blog helps me to announce his participation in CAD/PLM events to be held in Moscow, September 14.

First, I reproduce Deelip' s post:

This September I will be attending isicad 2010 (English translation) and the COFES-Russia Seminar to be held in Moscow. isicad is a bi-annual Russian CAD/PLM conference organized by Ledas and this time Cyon Research is holding a one day COFES seminar as part of the conference. I have never been to Russia before and I intend to visit a few Russian CAD software companies while I am there.
Ledas CEO David Levin is being kind enough to help me organize my trip. A few days ago he announced my participation in isicad 2010 on his Russian blog (Google’s English translation is here). Actually I like the Google Russian translation. According to David and then according to Google I am allegedly the “most popular and prolific English-language blogger, but not less prolific producer of plug-ins to most known CAD“.
Love it. Not sure if that was what David actually wrote, but I think I will take Google’s word for it.
How do you say “Get me some vodka” in Russian?

(For justice' sake, since I don't know statistics, I named Deelip as "one of the most popular bloggers".)

I am really happy that this year, after a very effective Russian tour of Ralph Grabowski in September 2009, Brad Holtz and Deelip Menezes will actively participate in the Moscow events. I invite other international CAD/PLM actors to attend COFES-Russia and isicad-2010. There is no need to explain what is a COFES-related event. As for the isicad multi-vendor forums, you can take a look at the English web sites of the isicad-2004, isicad-2006, and isicad-2008.

I am sure a potential of mutually fruitful business and technology communication between Russia and the world in high-tech and particular in IT is very far from saturation.

One important point is that we must know each other much better. A very small example is vodka: judging by several Deelip's notes, he is obviously not aware about real role of vodka in Russia:). Vodka is not so popular in IT as he imagines and vodka is not so dangerous when properly used: we shall explain him:)...

At last about Google translating. Yes, it's quite useful. If you don't care when "Roopinder Tara" is translated into "Rupinder Packaging":).