By Richard Williams, Director of Product Development, Trimble Navigation Ltd
I was fortunate to be able to extend a recent trip to the US to include the 32nd annual PDMA conference. PDMA hosted the conference at a Disney World resort hotel, which provided excellent facilities, but left you feeling that without young children you were somewhat out of place. Be warned that next year’s conference will be in Disney Land on the other side of the country in Anaheim (Nov 2-4).
As a recent member of PDMA, I wasn’t sure what to expect. So I was pleasantly surprised to find that the conference was highly relevant and valuable, and that many of the issues we face are common across diverse industries. Attendance was probably around a few hundred, so this made it easy to visit all of the 40+ exhibitors and discuss their offerings. The majority seemed to be either selling software or services (or both) to help with various stages of the product development cycle from idea to delivery.
The highlights were excellent plenary presentations from industry leaders, including Helen Greiner from iRobot, Takashi Tanaka and Don Kieffer who talked about Obeya (the big room), and Andrew Lippman from MIT’s Media Lab. Hearing passionate people talk is enjoyable and inspirational. On the final day I attended a workshop on strategies and tools for getting products to market faster. Although the material was fairly high level, the group discussion with eight other attendees and two facilitators was excellent for discovering how others tackle this problem.
