A lot more options to follow the conversation at this year’s Siemens PLM Connection user conference

Next week I will be heading to Orlando to he lovely (and immense) Gaylord Orlando Palms for the 2008 edition of our Americas user conference, Siemens PLM Connection.  This is a much larger event than the analyst and media event a few weeks ago, so we are adding a few more people to cover all the goings on.  In addition to me, you will see posts from the like of Mark Burhop, Susan Cinadr, John Hilbert, Jim Turner and Aaron Brazell, the latter two from One by One media.  We will be covering as many sessions as we can get to, so if you can’t make it to the event at all or just a specific session, but are still interested in what is discussed, just leave a comment on with the session name you want us to write up. 

Some more thoughts for those of you attending the conference:

• Get your twitter account setup now and connect it to your mobile phone.  Start to follow @SiemensPLM and @PLMWorld.  We both will be sending updates throughout the conference and getting and sending them via twitter on your phone will be really convenient. 
• For more detailed instructions on reading, commenting or creating see the Siemens PLM Connection Social Media guide. (PDF Link).  If you don’t want to look at the PDF, the most important advice I can give you is: tag everything you do with #plmconam08.
• be on the look out for us since we will be doing video interviews.  Anyone we interview will automatically be entered to win the ‘best of show” social media awards we are giving out during the Thursday closing session detailed in the PDF linked to above.  If you want to get yourself ready for an interview, take a look at a few that I did last week at the analyst conference.

For those of of you who for whatever reason can’t make it to the conference this year, here are a few tips for you:

• We will be live streaming the opening session on Monday June 2nd from 7:30-10:30 AM ET.  I know that may be a bit early for any of you on the west coast, but hey, I’ve been on my fair share of calls at 8 at night, so you can get up early once for us east coast guys .  The live stream will be on the Siemens PLM Software TV channel on Ustream and will not be available for replay, so make sure to catch it when it’s happening.  You’ll get to hear from John Manderfield the PLM World chairman, Tony Affuso and Helmuth Ludwig of Siemens PLM Software, Jim Sistek from Visteon and Chuck Grindstaff from Siemens PLM Software will wrap things up.  I will be on the chat engine on the live stream, so be sure to stop by and at least say hello.
• Be sure to check back here (you may even want to subscribe using your favorite RSS feed reader) as well as the PLM World blog.  There will be fairly regular summaries of all the sessions.  Of course you cal also follow us on twitter for more bite sized updates.

I missed last year’s user event (all three actually, the Americas, the AP and the EMEA events) so I am really excited to get back this year and talk with some users about all the great stuff they are inventing with our products.  The biggest reason I can’t imagine ever working in another industry is the great things people do with the products we create – and Siemens PLM Connection is the biggest gathering of people doing great things out there, so it will be 3 days in heaven for me.