SolidWorks treated the journalists of the press to a dinner event at The Great Hall of China in Disney’s Epcot China Courtyard.  It was a beautiful setting and the weather was perfect!

During the opening comments, Jeff Ray announced that there were over 150 journalists attending SolidWorks World 2009; the most ever at the event.  He also recognized the journalists who had traveled the farthest to the event, including one from Australia.

Jeff also mentioned a few interesting tidbits regarding Sir Richard Branson.  Sir Richard almost NEVER accepts speaking engagements for personal reasons, so it was a real honor to have him agree to speak today.

After the morning’s General Session, they moved Sir Richard over to the Swan hotel for the press conference.  It was quite a walk (approximately 15 minutes with the crowd), but they drove Sir Richard over in a car.  Sir Richard is quite a busy individual, and was slated to be in Boston (I believe) tonight.

So one would expect such an individual to be on the phone making big-money deals and such, but instead, Sir Richard was only concerned with 2 things (as I mentioned in my earlier post):

1. Why are there so few women engineers/designers, and
2. How he could get his hands on the incubator for use in Africa immediately.

Several SolidWorks folks asked me how I enjoyed the presentation today, and I had to reply that it was one of my favorites (along with seeing Woz in New Orleans in 2007).  It was very inspirational!

Unfortunately (for us), there is SO MUCH to do at SolidWorks World.  The bloggers are SolidWorks users first, and we are all Certified SolidWorks Professionals (CSWP).  We all wanted to be able to attend the CSWP event too, so Nancy worked it out so that we could leave the press dinner early and catch the end of the CSWP event.  Unfortunately, the dinner started a little late, and we had to leave to catch our bus during the middle of Jeff Ray’s talk.  I hope he understands…

I will have another post soon on the CSWP event, so be sure to check back!