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Friedrichshafen, a beautiful town on the shores of Lake Constance in the southwest of Germany, close to the Austrian and Swiss borders, hosted the 2003 PTC/USER World Event Europe. Although not among the major European cities, from October 26 to 28 Friedrichshafen became the capital of the European PTC/USER world.
In an effort to minimize overall expenses and to maximize conference attendance, the conference was carried out as an upscaled version of the Annual Pro-D Conference. Pro-D, the regional usergroup for the German speaking European countries, accepted the risk to organize this meeting after two previous European user conferences, that had been organized primarily by PTC.
When the basic decision was made during the Orlando conference earlier this year, the boundary conditions were quite challenging; there were many questions that had to be answered:
- How would the traditional German attendance accept a mostly English spoken conference?
- There were some other regional user group meetings scheduled for the October - November timeframe. Would we be able to drive attendance from these countries?
- How would the tight cooperation with PTC corporate work?
- Would we be able to meet the budgetary requirements?
To be honest, the budget was the easiest issue to be solved. The "Graf Zeppelin Haus" in Friedrichshafen is a perfect location with moderate prices, that allowed us to keep the fees for attendees as well as exhibitors at an attractive level. Simultaneous translation, one of the cost drivers, was limited to two languages, German and English.
The cooperation with PTC Corporate in Needham worked really well, taking into account that nobody knew each other personally, there was a six hour time difference, and the conference team in Europe, i.e. the Pro-D Board and PTC in Munich, was spread all over Germany and Austria.
The conference team did a great job in preparing the event. Left to right: H.Stewart(PTC Needham), J.Dunn(PTC Needham), P.Haberer(PTC Munich), U.Kiss(Pro-D), C.Wagner(Pro-D), L.Enders(Pro-D), S.Reul(Pro-D), B.Wagner(Pro-D). Not in photo: K.Haack(PTC Munich), K.Johnson(PTC/USER)
We were able to put together a most interesting conference agenda. More than 50 abstracts gave us the opportunity to select 37 expert presentations, covering Pro/ENGINEER use, administration and training, Pro/INTRALINK and Windchill applications and strategic PLM (product lifecycle management) projects. PTC sent most of the PLMs, who brought PUBs (Product Update Briefings), BPSs (Best Practice Sessions) and were available in the exhibit hall to answer the attendees´questions.
Two conference highlights were the keynote presentations given by Jim Heppelmann (PTC's CTO) and Dick Harrison (PTC´s president and CEO).
PTC offered Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire Hands On sessions and attendees had the opportunity to pick up a 50% voucher for the Pro/ENGINEER level 1 certification test, that is available over the Internet.
The exhibit area was fully packed with around 30 German companies, offering their products and services, that supplement the suite of PTC products. Unfortunately we were not able to bring service providers from outside Germany to the conference.
The PTC booths gave users access to all the PLMs.
During the breaks attendees held discussions among themselves and with exhibitors.
As expected, the majority of the 330 attendees came from the German speaking countries (approx. 70%), but there were users from several other countries, including Russia and Pakistan. It was rather disappointing that French and Italian users did not yet attend the conference in bigger numbers considering the large customer base in these countries.
The Pro-D Conference has always featured an evening event at the end of day one; we maintained this tradition for the PTC/USER World Event.
The Zeppelin Hangar, garage of two real full-size zeppelins, was the perfect environment for a night full of surprises. A huge dinner buffet, several artists and dance music let everybody have a great time.
Looking back I can summarize that this event has become a big success for the PTC/USER family. More than 500 conference attendees (including exhibitors and PTC) were more than satisfied with the result and we are all looking forward to next year's conference, which will return to Friedrichshafen. Please mark your calendars for October 24-26, 2004.
If you want to read or see more about the conference, please visit http://www.pro-d.de (available in German and English). 
Andreas Wenzel is the PTC/USER European Liaison. He can be reached via e-mail at andreas.wenzel@waces.at.
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