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 . 

LEDAS enhances its key business in service after selling its technologies to Bricsys

Here is some part of my motivations for selling LEDAS technologies.  

Here is a link to the official press-release of today.

Here you can see how Erik de Keyser and I signed the Agreement:

Yesterday night, Erik and I were explaining to Deelip Menezes and Ralph Grabowski some details and mutual advantages. This obviously means that soon you will likely read some weighty opinions from the bloggers:

Well, in the long run, it’s me who sold some part of my property. Therefore, you should (or must?) take my opinion into account.  Here it is.

I have sold something which was not profitable for me in direct sales however has been approved as a very valuable and efficient when applied in a proper context, by appropriate brains and hands. Therefore I’ve got adequate money while the buyer got adequate tools for faster development of his business. This means that the deal is fair and mutually beneficial.

Moreover, the Agreement is specified so that I will get a good part of the revenue to be generated by Bricsys by application of the technologies acquired from LEDAS. Therefore I am very interested  in success of this application. To decrease risk of this project, we agreed that a small team of LEDAS developers will be transferred from LEDAS to a Russian department of Bricsys soon to appear. This team will be headed by Dmitry Ushakov who is a real father of the technologies and products in question: he is the best person to efficiently apply, and when necessary, improve/adjust/update/… his technological inventions. Dmitry will quit his current position of LEDAS CEO but remains one of the key members of the LEDAS Board, leading LEDAS expert, consultant, and guru, the editor of www.isicad.ru (and www.isicad.net), and other. Dmitry will definitely continue to efficiently contribute to the business development of LEDAS.

Another important aspect of the deal with Bricsys is that LEDAS continues maintenance of the sold products and becomes their privileged distributor. In particular, no current licensee of LGSs and other components and products will be damaged.

You will inevitably ask me: is it in total something negative that during couple months LEDAS  terminated a 12-year cooperation with Dassault Systemes and sold its unique technologies? My answer is simple: if you consider not emotions, prejudices of LEDAS academic background, and inertia but instead will judge by business and growth criteria, all this is definitely positive. Today LEDAS has higher level of revenue than one year ago with DS and with the technologies. We have now much more transparent, natural, and balanced structure of the business as well as good potential for further business extension in providing highest quality service in software development (SD). Maybe “potential and future” sounds not very convincing but if you need to perform an outsourcing SD project with a unique combination of quality, reliability, and price – address LEDAS right now.  

Well, I have some more formal and informal comments on the LEDAS history, love story with DS, why Bricsys, more events from recently, and plans: Deelip Menezes kindly invited me to describe this in a guest post for his blog. I will do my best to implement this honorable invitation. 

Around Bricsys 2011 conference. Oct 4, morning

Arnold van der Weide, President of Open Design Alliance, Ralph Grabowski, The Blogger and CAD Guru, David Levin, LEDAS, Randall Newton, GraphicSpeak:

Deelip Menezes (The Blogger, CAD Guru, and capitalist) arrived:

Today, Brussels is excited by two key topics (Left - Bricsys conference, right - Sex and City ):

For more information, see #bricsys2011 on Twitter.

Deelip Menezes and Martyn Day at LEDAS and around

25 September Deelip Menezes and Martyn Day spent in Novosibirsk: at LEDAS office and around. In his blog, Deelip describes this day (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) and says:

"Martyn Day from DEVELOP3D and I are in Novosibirsk in Siberia to visit LEDAS, a very interesting Russian software research and development company. We spent the entire day at LEDAS and learned a great deal about them, a lot of which was highly classified and not for public consumption. I intend to write more about the company, its technologies and products after I get back to India".

What I can add to Deelip's posts are a few photos and two video clips that I definitely recommend to see:).

Before the beginning of a series of seminars.

Guests listen to an overview of a LEDAS application with advanced features of direct modeling to be released in December

It was especially nice when guests began to passionately argue among themselves on how to develop business of LEDAS

On our way to Armenian restaurant "Anait", Deelip is still interested in discussing with me the LEDAS pricing policy and...

... variational direct modeling - with Dmitry Ushakov.

Deelip, just do it - number 2! (see number 1)

This does not mean that after 57% Armenian vodka Deelip could not keep his spoon: this is just Siberian hospitality.

The main hero of the two video clips below is the financial director of LEDAS, a man with a lot of talents - Evgeniy Kuznetsov.

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!

Round tables and their moderators at COFES-Russia / isicad-2010

Several days ago, I presented those who confirmed their participation in COFES-Russia / isicad-2010. Now – about the moderators of the working groups (WG). WG is a round-table which is intended not only to discuss an important topic but also to formulate results of the discussion and present them to the final joint round table combined with a press-conference. See the event’s agenda with the links to the detailed description of WGs.

I hope those who know Oleg Shilovitsky and Deelip Menezes will not be surprised to see them at the Moscow event not only as bloggers but also as moderators and speakers.

Oleg has over ten years successfully been working as the CTO at (ENOVIA) SmarTeam, and I believe that today he uniquely combines a very rich practical experience with corporate independence and striving for profound analysis on what’s next in PLM and around?

Deelip’s company SYCODE makes plug-ins for practically all CADs, so he must know everything. On the other hand, if you look through Deelip’s blog (for example try to search direct modeling) you can see that he thoroughly and meticulously studies the most fresh, trendy and actively developing methods for direct modeling, synchronous technology, ... and all that stuff which we codified in the name of Working Group 2: "Intelligent methods of 3D modeling”. People from at least SpaceClaim and LEDAS who are practically working in this domain will actively participate in WG-2 but Deelip is universally informative and independent...

Elena Konvisar has been in marketing for many years, today she manages this direction in a respectable integrator company NEOLANT, and is well known as an experienced moderator of round tables with participation of many CAD vendors of the Russian market: see for example, "CAD vendors without ties: a full transcript" (in Russian) . Elena asked Oleg Shilovitsky to help her: this time Oleg is involved as an active connoisseur and promoter of modern means of work in social networks.

Vladimir Talapov is for a long time productively working with students in Novosibirsk Architectural University. Vladimir has a Ph.D. in mathematics and combines the talents of a practical teacher, uninhibited brilliant orator and polemicist (see for example the article "Modern design industry is a world of greedy predators” – in Russian), as well - a connoisseur and promoter of advanced industrial technologies. The isicad-2010 exhibition presents many projects made by Vladimir’s students.

Topics related to the free platform, open source, etc., not accidentally fell into the hands of Nanosoft: see The upFront.eZine Tour of Russia. Part VI: Nanosoft. Anyone who looks at the "Who's Who" section on the company’s web site, understands that Dmitri Popov is the best candidate for being a moderator: he is from Siberia, he holds a Ph.D., and he is the author of a textbook, he was working for Xerox, he wrote a system of parametric design and he is a fan of summer skiing in the Alps ...

In the hardware working group we plan to consider several new products. Similar to the new software (WG-2), it was decided that discussion will be hold by an independent expert - Vladimir Malukh who, with his broad competence, can play a role of a customer presenting the entire field of engineering software. Vladimir is also known as an experienced moderator of round tables.

Autodesk is one of the apparent leaders in the field of AEC, in particular, in the solutions that extend design to the full cycle of integrated modeling of buildings. Pavel Hanzhenkov is the head of AEC sector at the Russian office of Autodesk with a previous experience in a similar position at Honeywell: his practical expertise has been evidently expressed in the vital topics that Pavel proposes for the discussion at WG-7.

Detailed description of all working groups is available here.

Media at COFES-Russia / isicad-2010

COFES-Russia will be held in 27 days. The key parameters of the event are of course determined, see the agenda and details. It's time to present some key participants.

All CAD/PLM - related Russian language media will attend COFES-Russia combined with isicad-2010 multi-vendor Forum. I am glad that some world-known media persons writing in English will also participate.

Elena Goretkina is a popular journalist writing for PC Week RE, those who read Russian can estimate an impressive list of Elena's recent publications.

Alexandra Sukhanova is the managing director of CAD/CAM/CAE Observer known by its intelligent approach to the domain. Alexandra is particularly famous by her fascinating series of interviews with the leaders of the world and Russian CAD/PLM market.

Leslie Gordon is for sure well-known to the Western CAD market by her work in Machine Design and Medical Design where Leslie is a senior editor. I hope we shall read Leslie's impressions of her upcoming visit to Moscow.

Deelip, Oleg, and Martyn are without my introduction perfectly known to the English reading CAD-people. I am looking forward to reading many fresh and well-illustrated reports of Deelip, new profound Oleg's thoughts (generated by Moscow atmosphere) about the fate of PLM, and Martyn's articles about the region new for Develop 3D - the magazine which in the twitter times gives hope to the paper media and which is becoming more and more popular in Russia.

Dmitry Ushakov is not only the key technological and product defining person at LEDAS but is also actively writing for isicad.ru / isicad.net, being a leading member of the editorial board of these editions. Dmitry Kraskovsky is the editor-in-chief of "SAPR i Grafika" (~"CAD and Graphics") - definitely the most known Russian CAD-monthly with an obvious and stable pragmatic emphasis. Dmitry Movchan is the founder and CEO of a publishing house DMK-press, which is the leader in producing CAD and IT related popular books in Russian. You see, there are three Dmitrys but this is just a coincidence:)...

It's quite probable that some more Russian people writing about CAD/PLM will attend the event on 21 September. Note that among such persons there could be Russian bloggers who usually prefer to stay incognito (How about participating in a press-conference?). Is such phenomenon known among CAD-bloggers writing in English?

COFES-Russia Update and Deelip Menezes

Today, at the very end of my Siberian working day, I've published at isicad.net a new - rather detailed - agenda of the COFES-Russia Seminar which will be held this September in Moscow. Then some small time later, I decided to put in my blog a link to this agenda - to add it some promotion.

However before I made this link, I found out that Deelip Menezes has already published his post about my new agenda. Deelip is a real professional!

Well, I decided it would be better if, instead of going directly to isicad.net, you go there via this Deelip's post and his comments.

.

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":).