COFES 2010 Registrations Open

I just registered for COFES 2010, the annual Oscars of the CAD software industry. This is going to be my third COFES and like the last two (COFES 2008 and COFES 2009) I will be attending as part of the CAD press.

This year the theme is “Best-Practices Aren’t Good Enough“. As the COFES 2010 home page says:

At COFES’ past, we’ve discussed design, engineering, sustainability, and innovation. We’ve all asked “What best practices should we adopt?”  By and large the response has been to repeat the past; only better, faster, and cheaper. At COFES 2010, we’re asking “What can we do to make our customers more effective innovators?” and “How can we innovate in the development of better practices?”

The COFES 2010 Friday keynote will be delivered by Omid Moghadam. The keynote is titled “From Product Informatics to BioInformatics” in which Omid will discuss how software vendors from design and engineering fields have an opportunity to play a disruptive role in bioinformatics.

Omid Moghadam is the chair of the National Development Board for the Ignite Institute for Individual Health and recently joined Harvard Medical School’s Center for Biomedical Informatics. As an inventor he holds 32 patents and has tremendous experience in the fields of engineering and healthcare. In his talk, Omid will focus on the software needs of the exploding fields of bioinformatics and genomics and highlight the where tools from design and engineering might play in those wide-open markets.

The agenda for COFES 2010 can be found here. They even have a Twitter list of COFES 2009 attendees here. COFES is an invitiation only event and you need to apply for an invitation. But before you do I suggest that you consider this statement on the application page.

Please note that invited attendees usually hold a position within the firm that empowers the attendee to implement strategic technology decisions. Titles include: Director of Global Automation, Chief Technology Officer, Vice-President of Engineering, Director of Design, and so on.

There is another way. You can get yourself recommended by someone who has previously been a COFES attendee. If the organizers find that you fit their profile, they will send you an invitation.

The best part of COFES is the personal interactions that you have with other attendees. To fully interstand what I mean, you simply have to read this.