Recently, the CAD Society experienced a little bit of a rebound: with a vitalized strategy from president Mike McGrath, and VP, Tom Lazear, the Society decided to revive itself as a cross-industry organization that will tackle both the positives, and the negatives, of the industry as a much stronger voice and organization.The CAD Society is looking for new members, ones who want to benefit from a range of discounts available to members, including hardware discounts from HP, software discounts from Archway Systems, and training from companies such as i.get.it. Members only gain access to about 13 discounts currently on offer - an offering that is set to rise across the coming months.As for what else? The CAD Society is going to issue a newsletter, a job forum eventually, as well as forums, networking, and ultimately a program for mentoring engineers and an intern connection program. In addition, the CAD Society will be issuing its opinions on industry issues, to help...

Following last week's COFES 2008 event, here are some links to a bunch of new postings by attendees. Most are very positive, but one is quite strange....Deelip blogs COFES for Ralphhttp://worldcadaccess.typepad.com/blog/2008/04/cofes-2008---da.htmlandhttp://worldcadaccess.typepad.com/blog/2008/04/cofes2008---day.htmlRandall posts gentle fun on COFEShttp://3dcadnews.blog.com/Deelip posts for himselfhttp://www.deelip.com/The COFES wannabehttp://wertel.blogspot.com/Lynn Allen posts a note about the event (note to Brad: send Lynn a decent photo)http://lynn.blogs.com/Evan describes his delight in receiving recognitionhttp://www.evanyares.com/Solid Smack...

Alan Cooper's superb 2006 Keynote is now available on video for all registered attendees to view.

The University of Colorado, at Colorado Springs, recently announced a new degree program - a Bachelor's of Innovation. Can Innovation really be taught?

Comment now on the issues and topics you feel are important to your business, and that should be discussed during COFES 2007.

USA Today and Yahoo News reported this week that US manufacturers are struggling to find skilled laborers to do the hard work of manufacturing. And this is despite the reported millions of lost manufacturing jobs in recent years.

InformationWeek published an interesting article about the 'Patent Trap' - an issue which has been dominating the IT news headlines for months now. And ends with the question - Do Patents Stop Innovation?

is there a point where innovation stops and engineering begins? Based on a conversation today, there isn't a defining line

This was the rather surprising title to a spam email I just received. This entry looks into how Spam is affecting my working life and questions what the future holds

If you create a new term and no one hears it, was it worthwhile? A look at Right Hemisphere's activities with "Product Graphics Management" provides a great case study in how to gain acceptance for a new term or concept, but is the term actually right?

Contrary to popular understanding that new products are driven by customer demand, new research finds that IT innovations are giving rise to a new breed of product - created by changes in IT and then revealed to the public to fuel demand.

Lester Craft recently posted an article on COFES at his Innovate Forum site. In it he talks about the difference between 'just dumb', and 'brilliantly dumb' innovations: the difference is, according to Craft, that some of the biggest innovations have been brilliantly dumb. Read on ....

The National Inventor's Hall of Fame today announced its 2006 inductees. Why do we care? Because it is interesting to see just how long ago some important inventions were made.

There is a growth of concern about the continued usability - or lack thereof - of CAD software. Steve Wolfe hosted a briefing session about it and I am impatient to get the audio recording of it for reference. Martyn Day was intended to host a briefing about this at the event too, but unfortunately missed his plane and turned up late.

One of Alan Cooper's main complaints (our keynoter BTW) in his book 'The Inmates are Running the Asylum" is that interfaces on almost any product, anywhere, are not given the attention they need to make a product usable. This doesn't only refer to CAD products, but also to simple things like VCRs, microwaves etc. CAD products are incredibly powerful tools. But for some reason, we have to spend months learning to use one. Why is that? Why isn't it obvious what button to press to make a shape? Why doesn't this powerful tool show me what I am doing, and make it easy?

While I had a quick whinge about this during COFES, Shyamal Roy from Geomate asked me a very...