As part of the conference organizing team, the long days and Barcelona nights are very tiring. But when I see that all of the attendees and conference sponsors really value our work, it makes all the hard-work worthwhile. Based on the immediate feedback that I received from the delegates, both those who have attended for many years as well as first-timers – the 2011 SIMULIA Customer Conference was a smashing success!

Wednesday night 400 SCC attendees and I embarked on the night’s entertainment with a short but energetic walk up to the conference banquet.

Our annual banquet took place at the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya (MNAC) inside the National Palau of Montjuïc at the heart of Catalunya. The striking MNAC building is set on the side of a hill to the South of the city. The Palau and its grounds have so many spectacular views over Barcelona I needed an extra hand to count them all. We took the conference photo (above) overlooking the entire city. The museum had incredible acoustics

As I walked into the Oval Room inside, the Palau was lit up with more than one hundred individual lights to bring it to life during our dinner. It was absolutely breathtaking. To conclude the evening we were entertained by a fiery flamenco group which raised the roof and got a standing ovation from the crowd. I’ll certainly remember the evening for a long time to come.

Here’s a little taste of the Flamenco performance:

Thursday the conference continued to provide strong content as we had another 25 customer presentations. One interesting paper was presented by Dana Coombs from Synthes on the Simulation of lubars spine biomechanics using Abaqus. In the Process Automation track, Thales Alenia Space Italia gave an overview of their analysis work using Isight to study and optimize the design for guidance navigation, control and aero thermal characterization of a space vehicle.

SIMULIA managers in our industry and product group presented two General Lectures that were attended by more than 300 delegates. The first lecture detailed the groundbreaking work university researchers and SIMULIA are doing with Realistic Human Simulation. Subham Sett, our Life Sciences Industry Lead, gave a compelling overview of the need to be able to simulate the human body and how it interacts with products, medical devices, and nature.

The final lecture of the conference demonstrated SIMULIA’s next generation Version6 simulation software which leverages collaboration technology from Dassault Systèmes and FEA and Multiphysics technology from the SIMULIA brand. Christina Feist, and Fabien Letailleur, and Paul Lalor gave a live demo that highlighted the impressive modeling, visualization, and collaboration tools that leverage underlying Abaqus FEA to perform realistic simulation.

It’s an understatement to say the SCC Barcelona has been fantastic! Truly, the customer’s positive comments bring me more energy as I write this blog and the team packs up our gear all around me! Thanks to all my team members! And a big thank you to all customers that attended and presented. The conference could not be possible with the support of our partner sponsors. I have to give a shout out to our conference manager Christina Apostal, it was the first SCC she has managed and she has already booked the Rhode Island Convention center for our 2012 SCC.

I hope to see all of my old and new friends in Providence at the same time next year!

Adios Barcelona . . . Vamos a Providence!

Tom