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LiveWorx 2018

BenLoosli
23-Emerald II

LiveWorx 2018

I have my admission to LiveWorx, a training day, my hotel and even airline tickets, I do want to make a request for next year.

 

Please do NOT hold LiveWorx in Boston again!!!!

The hotels are very expensive, even with the conference rate and airfare is worse.

I do appreciate the fact that it is in PTC's 'backyard' and they save on airfare, but that is about it. How many PTC employees are actually staying at their home and commuting to BCEC everyday for the conference?

 

Conference shows like this need to be moved around the country to get those people who may not be able to afford a Boston trip. 3 out of 4 years in Boston is too much.

25 REPLIES 25

I totally agree - it is much more costly to go to Boston than other venues in the past - especially having to go there twice a year (TCs and Conference).  Additionally Boston is not the place to go in the winter.  Everyone basically ended up spending extra time there in January due to the weather and airlines shutting down.

STEVEG
21-Topaz I
(To:BenLoosli)

I'm sure wherever it is next year they already have the city booked.

Agreed.  I heard they made a 5 year commitment to Boston.  Nobody I speak with wants to go to Boston.  We loved Nashville, Orlando and Anaheim.  There's no way I would ask my employer to pay $250-$300 per night for hotel to attend a convention.

BenLoosli
23-Emerald II
(To:dweich)

When I heard Boston again at the end of Reshma's talk, I thought the same thing...Do they have a 5 year contract for the convention center?

STEVEG
21-Topaz I
(To:BenLoosli)

Is there any word confirmation on if it's in Boston again next year or somewhere else?

gleonard3
13-Aquamarine
(To:BenLoosli)

Boston. 2018. Confirmed.

STEVEG
21-Topaz I
(To:gleonard3)

Thank you George.  Too bad though.  Don't get me wrong.  I do love Boston but it is expensive.

Maybe I'll still see if I can attend next year.

Here you can see that next year LiveWorx it will be in Boston (pwd LiveWorx17)

https://www.liveworx.com/live

Capture.PNG

Marco

Ben...

 

Your displeasure with the selection has been noted - and summarily ignored. Oh, and please pay your maintenance on time.

 - Signed Jim Heppelman

 

 

BenLoosli
23-Emerald II
(To:BrianMartin)

For an on-time maintenance paying customer and conference attendee, PTC ignoring any comment I make is par for the course.

 

BenLoosli
23-Emerald II
(To:BenLoosli)

PS: I doubt the maintenance fees we pay cover Jim's income taxes!

One other note - if you decide to share any ideas (including here), be prepared for PTC to 'reappropriate' them as they see fit. Two words which, to me, will never be forgotten: Drone Arena.

 

Challenge accepted, PTC. What's that dish best served cold? Hmm. I can't remember.

Bwahahaha!  I had to look that name up.  Hope ya been well Brian!

STEVEG
21-Topaz I
(To:BenLoosli)

How many years has it been in Boston so far?

BenLoosli
23-Emerald II
(To:STEVEG)

2013 - Anaheim

2014 - Boston

2015 - Nashville

2016 - Boston

2017 - Boston

2018 - Boston

2019 - Boston? year 4 of 5

2020 - Boston? year 5 of 5

rreifsnyder
13-Aquamarine
(To:STEVEG)

I wouldn't be looking for them to go anywhere else anytime soon. They are moving their headquarters within walking distance of the conference center. https://www.ptc.com/en/news/2017/ptc-to-move-global-headquarters-to-boston-seaport It's down by the Whiskey Priest Pub. I couldn't imagine having to drive downtown everyday for work, and parking is a mess.

BenLoosli
23-Emerald II
(To:rreifsnyder)

Hopefully Boston will be extending a subway line to that part of town to serve the many businesses.

A 12 minute walk to South Station is too long in Boston winters.

jmcmanus
14-Alexandrite
(To:BenLoosli)

Hello Ben,

Please accept my apologies for a late response - recently back from maternity leave and missed this thread over the summer and the responses in between.

We are in Boston for the foreseeable future. I'm happy to explain this decision with full disclosure:

Keeping the event in Boston year after year has allowed us to put a lot of energy towards improving content, speakers, and the attendee's overall event experience. We get this feedback in front of our executives every year and due to the amount our event has grown and Boston as the IoT and Innovation Hub, we come back to this being the best decision for our customers. (Also addressed in this blog.)

Another major factor is we have substantially grown our international audience and for most traveling internationally, Boston is a universal destination for flights and accommodations.

We absolutely understand Boston having a price tag attached to it for your companies and negotiate hard with hotels and worked on our pricing model to deeply discount rates starting early withe our "Early Bird" specials.  In years past there was barely a ticket less than $1,000 and we offered a lot less at the event. Until the end of the week, there is actually $600 in savings, less than a $1,000 per ticket, and allows for major savings by registering early. I also realize most registrants are waiting for sessions to be released before registering - the session catalog will be released in early February. However, we do offer a full refund for registrants up until April 15, 2018, should the content not support your time out of the office. 

We have taken the feedback year after year and worked hard on making this event possible for everyone - mostly improving our pricing model and offering negotiated hotel rates. And to address the internal policy for PTC employees - We have changed our own internal policy in recent years and there are hundreds of PTC employees who commute into Boston for these few days either by driving in or taking the shuttle bus we provide to cut major costs in Travel and Expense as we would incur in the past. Some employees "buddy up" in hotels if their schedules and duties on-site are overwhelming enough to warrant a stay in the city.

I'm happy to address any further concerns and hope this "full disclosure" gives an overall better understanding of our decision to be in Boston year after year.

As always Ben, appreciate your feedback.

Jen

 

rreifsnyder
13-Aquamarine
(To:jmcmanus)

Jen,

Thank you for replying. Personally I do recognize the advantages of PTC hosting in Boston and in fact since I'm in the northeast, it works for me as well but I also recognize that it wouldn't necessarily work for everyone else. Also, since you brought it up, the speakers the last few years have been a complete waste of my time. I love the Mythbusters, but their talk had nothing to do with my use of PTC software, and even less for Joseph Gordon-Levitt. He's a really good actor, but my company didn't spend the thousands of dollars it cost for me to be entertained or "educated" by someone like last years speaker from Girls who Code. Last year was a slight improvement in my opinion in scheduling IoT vs. CAD centric topics but there is simply too much fluff.

BenLoosli
23-Emerald II
(To:jmcmanus)

Jen,

 

Congratulations on the baby! Hope mother and child are doing well.

 

I found out yesterday that PTC LiveWorx will not be in the budget for this year.

 

I do see PTC's point about being where the center of IoT is located for the conference, but there is also value in hosting the event around the country to allow more people to attend who can not afford the expense of Boston. There are other cities that are international hubs for the foreign customers to fly in to and attend the conference. Orlando, Los Angeles area, Las Vegas or Reno, Dallas, Detroit, Washington/Baltimore etc all have conference facilities and the travel/hotel accommodations available for a conference of this size.

 

I also agree with the other comment added last night. Too much fluff not enough meat. I enjoyed Mythbusters and Reshma's talks, they did not provide me or my company any value in return for my attendance. Bring in keynote speakers who can highlight how PTC products have improved their business. Speakers who can give examples of something they have done out of the ordinary with a PTC product that may trigger a spark in our minds as to a way to improve the way we use our PTC products.

 

Yeaaaah... I'm going to go ahead and disagree.

 

Where's the HUB for Mechanical Engineering and Document Control? Anyone... anyone... Bueller? Wherever it is - it sure isn't BOSTON. The only way you could make this conference more expensive would be to conduct it directly in Manhattan.

 

Value for customers? Really? I found it fascinating that the Mythbusters basically hate each other. Joseph Gordon Levitt was so bad and so boring I actually stopped watching his movies. Stopped clocks are more thrilling. And what in the name of all that's HOLY did either of those presentations offer to customers?

 

For every young adult thrilled by IoT toys and AR gadgets, you'd find several veteran users ticked off at the lack of relevant content and the heavy-handed overwrought sales onslaught. In my opinion, PTC/User should bear a fair amount of the blame for this, too.

 

Who didn't see this coming? PTC takes over... useful event becomes a huge sales pitch. It's really no different than any other PTC project. How often has this been repeated: PTC buys a company, becomes fascinated with what they've bought for the next year or two, throws all their money and effort into promoting it, then loses interest and buys another new company to play with.

 

Supposedly there's new blood at PTC now, though... supposedly guys that "get it" that Creo and Windchill are still critically important. Well, if they "get it" and they're reading this, here are my unsolicited suggestions:

 

1. Quit firing all your longtime employees and PLM managers in favor of younger, dumber, less expensive sorts who know nothing of your products, their history, or the promises PTC made to customers in years past

 

2. Focus on what GOT you to the dance. Focus on your core products (Creo, Windchill in my opinion). Try as you might, Thingworx is not your core product. You might want it to be - but the product is barely ready to install in a production environment. And I mean b.a.r.e.l.y.

 

3. Quit focusing on hiring celebrities for your keynote speeches - make the keynotes about something. Occasionally you have a winner... but most are snooze-fests and useless celebrity worship.

 

4. Move the conference around the country. Focusing on Boston is horrendously unfair to the rest of the country. Not to mention, you're exposing yourself to a rather embarrassingly large Achilles' heel which, apparently, no one at PTC has ever figured out. (Don't look at me, I'm not giving it away!)

 

5. Focus on content... remove the focus from flashy sales presentations. I can only see an Augmented Reality demonstration one or two times before it's no longer cool and starts becoming an annoying distraction. Show me how you're going to streamline my workflow and processes to make my life easier. AR adds more stuff to the pipeline... it's not streamlining anything whatsoever.

 

6. Spend some money upgrading Creo and Windchill... fix the annoying bugs. Quit playing "catch up" with SolidWorks and NX and pass them already. Pour some of that IoT money into your other products. You're wasting a ton of money and what you have so far in ThingWorx is clearly not worth the investment.

 

7. Run the company like a tech company... where people, innovation, and intellectual property hold all the value. Quit running it like a sales company where all that matters is offering some new carrot to extract a few more bucks out of your customer's wallet.

 

Anyway... longer than I'd anticipated. In short... Boston again? Boo. Bad move. But that's typical PTC... lots and lots of bad moves justified by flawed logic and a myopic focus on the wrong aspects of your business. What else is new?

jmcmanus
14-Alexandrite
(To:BrianMartin)

Thanks everyone for your feedback (and well wishes for me) on the Celebrity Speakers/keynotes - noted and already passed on to our content folks. I forward all feedback on the event to the appropriate individuals.

 

thanks,

Jen

 

 

@BrianMartin...I cannot agree with you more!

Thanks, Steve...

 

I'm always in a bit of an odd place with PTC. I absolutely must foster strong relationships with PTC representatives, application engineers, support personnel, and training resources. My job depends on them. Yet, after dealing with the company for nearly 30 years, I believe I have earned the right to call them out when they're doing the wrong thing.

 

In my opinion, they're doing the wrong thing with Liveworx. I hope this year's event takes some of the Community feedback into account.

 

 

 

Awesome response!  Having only went to one of these (WAY back in...2005 maybe?), I was eager to ask my new boss about letting me go to this one.  Especially since I have grew up in Burlington (right near Boston)  and family in CT I haven't seen in many years.  Knowing and respecting Brian as much as I do, and seeing how PTC has behaved over the years, to me as well, I'd have to agree with his statements here.  I'm appalled that it's always going to be in Boston, and I cannot justify the expense of the outrageous hotel (and everything else) prices, so I'm not even going to ASK him if I can go.  I refuse to pay those kind of hotel prices even if he agreed to let me go.  Bummer.

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