? New Company, New Role, New Normal
August the 2nd 2021 on one hand feels like only yesterday but on the other already an age ago.
The 2nd was my first day at Dassault Systèmes, my first day in a ‘real’ office for over 18 months and the start of my new role delivering innovation solutions to science-based organizations for BIOVIA Dassault Systèmes.
Aside from the obvious changes from the last 18 months, not least wearing long trousers again, I can’t think of a better way to re-immerse myself back into office life. Everyone I see is smiling, even behind their facemasks.
The welcome is fantastic, and everybody is genuinely pleased, mostly I think, to be back in the office, but partly maybe to meet me too.
? Feelings of Belonging
The feeling of belonging also extends outside the office through the 3DS volunteering program. All employees receive 2 paid vacation days a year to volunteer for a good cause. On only my third Friday with the company, I swapped my office attire, along with 20 others, to work for the day clearing the gardens and outside areas for Northleigh House School, a fantastic local charity that provides a safe learning environment for vulnerable children.
? Drinking Our Own Champagne
You learn very quickly that life at Dassault Systèmes is all about our software. Many organizations talk about dogfooding, eating your own dog food or, in the case of Google, fish food,1 but in my experience this is often more talk than action.
This isn’t the case here at Dassault Systèmes though. Drinking our own champagne, very apt for a company born in France, is a part of daily life on your first day, your 30th day and probably for over 14,000 days for anyone here since Dassault Systèmes was founded back in 1981.
? Precognition and a Platform
In 2012 Dassault Systèmes announced the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, delivering best-in-breed collaboration, innovation and integration wherever needed across the entire supply chain. No one knew then what was going to happen to the world eight years later. You can call it foresight, or the now trendier precognition.
Whatever you call it, entering 2020 with an online platform that is accessible whenever you need it and wherever you are has put Dassault Systèmes and all our Partners in the pole position to flourish during the ‘remote working’ storm of these past 18 months.
Whether it’s delivering virtual collaboration with 3DLean from DELMIA, managing projects and product launches with ENOVIA or providing the tools that drive global scientific innovation with my favorite brand – BIOVIA, the one thing that joins us all together for work, volunteering, information, collaboration and innovation is the 3DEXPERIENCE platform.
?? Products for the Experience Economy
The term ‘platform’ means different things to different people, just ask a scaffolder or a politician, but at its simplest and in software terms a platform is an environment that facilitates the exchange of information and ideas between two or more interdependent groups. It sounds very simple, but, if you then consider the addition of applications such as BIOVIA Notebook, BIOVIA CISPro and QUMAS, you have all the capability you need to run your lab from anywhere and succeed in this strange state of affairs that we have now accepted as the new normal.
➡ Onwards & Upwards ⬆
Overall, the last month has flown by. I have learned so much. I have so much more to learn.
The cliché goes:
Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.
Maybe it hasn’t really been a month after all. All I know is I can’t wait to find out what challenges (and fun) the next 3, 12 or even 120 months have in store for me, and for all of us, at Dassault Systèmes.
Consider joining BIOVIA
1The term fish food comes from Google+, Google’s failed social network of some years ago. In its early development, the internal codename for Google+ was Emerald Sea. At that stage, the Google+ team did not consider the software good enough for dog food. Instead, they called it fish food because of Emerald Sea. Today, ‘fishfooding’ refers to using software very early in its development phase.
