As the title suggests I will be spending next week in the lovely yet highly congested city of San Francisco consuming all things Oracle and hopefully some decent seafood. I doubt if I will actually get to see the Wizard of Redwood City live but you never know. Oracle was kind enough to approve me as an event blogger so I will be bringing my "PLM Perspective" to the massive Oracle Open World event. As they say here in Texas this isn't my first rodeo having attended this event a couple of times since Oracle acquired Agile. Things have improved significantly since that first year where Agile was housed in the Hilton as sort of a mini show inside the bigger Open World spectacle. I will be providing a Product Lifecycle Management perspective to the show focusing exclusively on Agile PLM and Agile PLM related partners. I will include a running commentary via Twitter and Facebook with video and pictures and daily blogs on my experience at the show that will hopefully give you a good understanding of Oracle's plans around Agile PLM and a snapshot of some of the partners in the exhibition hall that support the product. Hopefully, it won't be all work and you can get a good feel for the magnitude of the event and the amount of resource Oracle puts into this amazing gathering.

This weekend I spent a good amount of time out on the lake and my son and daughter and several others were attempting to learn how to wakeboard and surf behind the boat. I grew up on the water and have owned a couple of boats in my day so I am very comfortable behind the boat. Skiing and wakeboarding is second nature to me. I am not turning pro at any point but I can hold my own jumping wakes and doing the occasional trick. I was struck by how difficult it is to transfer that knowledge to others. Trying to explain to others the steps it takes to get up on a wakeboard or a surfboard is very difficult. I have noticed some similarities in trying to transfer knowledge to others about Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) as well. As consultants we tend to immerse ourselves in whatever PLM technology we implement and support and sometimes this makes it difficult to  share with others how to use the technology effectively in their environments. This blog will discuss how to overcome these challenges and analyze the different ways knowledge can be transferred to end users and administrators attempting to leverage PLM in their companies. I will also discuss a couple of miscellaneous topics around PLM websites including our recent launch of our new review site PLMState. (http://www.plmstate.com).

I had mentioned in a previous blog how much planning I like to do when I go on vacation. Unfortunately, when you're out on the road there are a lot of variables that can wreck even the best laid plans. On our way from Santa Fe, New Mexico to Durango, Colorado I experienced a small insurrection from my crew. It wasn't quite a mutiny but there definitely was some insubordination. Apparently, we had eaten breakfast too late and none of them wanted to partake of lunch at my carefully selected lunch destination, "The Shed". They weren't very hungry and were eager to get on the road to our ultimate objective, Durango. So I found myself several hours later in Cuba, New Mexico with a car full of hungry people trying to figure out where to eat. Fortunately, I had recently downloaded the application "Yelp" to my Blackberry. It is a review tool that keys off of your GPS location and suggests restaurants in whatever area you find yourself. Even better it offers user reviews so you can evaluate how likely it is that you will contract food poisoning in certain obscure establishments. "Yelp" recommended El Bruno's which surprisingly had several reviews. One was so over the top positive I suspect it was from an employee but we went ahead and gave it a shot and we all survived it without major illness. This blog will analyze how we can leverage technology like "Yelp" in the PLM space to help make smarter decisions about the software we use and companies we work with to optimize product development.

Continuing on our world tour of PLM sites our next destination is the Dassault Systemes site which contains PLM information for Enovia. Much like the blog reviews for Oracle, PTC and Siemens we will discuss the pro's and cons for this site. One thing to note right off the bat is that Dassault's definition of Product Lifecycle Management differs somewhat from the other three vendors I have reviewed. This difference affects the content and the way it is organized on this site. From an organizational and execution perspective I think this is a very well done site. The navigation is clear and both PLM and social media and community information is featured prominently on the Dassault homepage. Where the site falls short is in the depth of information about PLM especially in comparison to some information available from other PLM vendors and their products. Dassault's PLM solutions are tied very closely to their CAD and automation tools. This fact is highlighted at the top of their page where they offer a hyperlink for PLM and explain how PLM alongside their simulation and CAD empower users to create, share and experience products in 3D. This blog will highlight the consistent structure that Dassault offers through their site which makes finding information very straightforward. Unfortunately I suspect that most, like me will wish for a bit more depth. I also wanted to commend Siemens on their response to my review of their site. Chris Kelly from Siemens brought up some good points about why their site is organized the way it is. They wanted to organize the demos in the context of the product they are associated with and wanted to offer navigation options to different types of users by offering the four different vectors on the front page. He also agreed that they will feature their blog more prominently and expose video content more readily on the product landing pages. I think these are great moves for the site and I am very impressed that Siemens closely monitors the user community.