Attendees returning from the conference’s first day keynote address may have been mildy surprised to find a whole crew of youngsters prowling around the LIVE Zone floor. Not to worry, these kids were special guests of Bentley Systems, here on a mission to learn more about the design and engineering profession and to experience an actual technical user conference. Getting Started The event had started earlier in the morning when Carol Rieg, Bentley’s...

Tuesday night is a little bit different than most evening events but promises to be a lot fun! Philadelphia is known worldwide for its iconic landmarks such as Robert Indiana's LOVE sculpture located on the Civic Center Mall. Inspired by this and dozens of other well known landmarks the " Be Together LIVE Design Competition " pits three design teams against one another to conceive, model and render a new Philadelphia landmark - in an hour...

Just a few items of note today: TOMORROW (Friday, April 23) is the LAST DAY for the early-bird registration rate and your chance to win Phillies tickets. The drawing for the tickets will be held early next week and the winners contacted so you'll have plenty of time to set your travel plans accordingly. The evening events are shaping up nicely. In case you missed it on the Be Together Conference home page, the registration fee includes in the evening...

Although I'm on vacation celebrating 30 years of marital bliss, I thought I'd drop a line or two. Keep an eye out for a Twitter contest from BentleySystems... could be fun! Friday of this week, is the LAST day of the early bird discount for the Be Together conference . In my opinion, given my perspective of over 20+ years of attending Bentley/IGUG events, this one is special if for no other reason than the mindset of the people who are bringing it...

From what I've heard and seen Be Together is really "coming together" nicely. One example is the latest published agenda that now includes the Applied Research sub-conference sessions. Did you even know Bentley has such a group dedicated to looking out into the future of infrastructure and coming up with new ideas that will impact how we all do business? Here's a couple titles to whet your appetite: Virtual and Augmented Reality in Infrastructure...

I'm on the road this week so haven't had time to wander the halls much so I thought I'd take a little stroll down memory lane by sharing the closing videos from past Bentley conferences. These are the videos played during the closing keynote address and is typically representative of the great time we all had at the event. In watching these I was moved enough that I'm thinking of taking week's vacation and go to the conference as a user (hope, Scott...

"Be Together" Frank again. Here's the latest news about the conference that will definitely be of interest... First off, there is a great document now posted on the Be Together Conference home site that you may find very useful, especially if you need to convince management attending is good for the company. I think the the title says it all: "5 reasons why you should "Just Say Yes!" to the Be Together Conference..."...

IT IS OFFICIAL... the full Be Together Conference AGENDA is now available on the conference home page (click on the "View Full Conference Agenda" link on the right side of the page.) It is a PDF document so you can save it, print it out and peruse at your convenience. Soon, you'll be able to register for the individual sessions but for now you have something to discuss with your manager. Knowing that there are a lot of baseball fans out...

I bring you more news... If you have anything to do with piping you'll definitely be interested in this. There will be several four hour HANDS-ON workshops with Bentley's new OpenPlant Modeler product. You will be able to sit down, get a bit of training and try it out for yourself. From what I hear Bentley Plant experts will be giving the training and then be on hand to answer questions and generally help out. If feedback from the Digital Plant conference...

"Be Together" Frank here... this my second installment about the Be Together Conference and what's new or interesting. From my previous Tidbit posting... rumor confirmed : Barry, Keith and Ray Bentley are taking part in an "open mike" Q&A session during the conference. I can tell you they are genuinely excited about this opportunity to connect with the attendees. No further details yet but things are "afoot." In case...

"Be Together" Frank here... I thought I would pass along some interesting info about the conference you may not have heard about yet. First, I can tell you there is a lot of conference-related activity going on behind the scenes right now which is quickly coming to fruition. Full descriptions of each "sub"-conference is being finalized as I write this. Example: right now check out the MicroStation and ProjectWise Conference . Note...

Are you a student looking for a chance to show off your design and technical expertise? If you are up for a real world design challenge then consider entering Bentley's annual Student Design Competition. For each category winner, Bentley provides scholarship as well as additional Bentley design and engineering software for their school. Plus winning a competition like this is not a bad thing to put on a resume either! Interested? Visit the Student...

The Be Communities was rolled out just over a year ago as way to bring together on one site infrastructure professionals to discuss, learn and get support on Bentley's many products in a casual, some say social environment. Judging by the daily traffic the success of Be Communities has been an overwhelming success. However, as good as it is, Be Communities - the social web site, can't replace good old one-on-one "face time" a real user conference...

As you probably know, Bentley is, once again, holding an honest to god face-to-face conference much like it has done in the recent past. However, I'm here to tell you that, in the immortal words of Chris Barron, Mr. Infrastructure Fever himself (see my previous blog) "this isn't your father's conference". Taking a cue from the very successful Be Communities social media site... and the amount of daily interactivity we intend to bring together...

As we move into 2010 I offer up this wonderful little ditty put together by Bentley's own VP of Corporate Marketing Chris Barron for the 2009 Be Inspired conference. Enjoy! Great pipes Chris! HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!

As you can read in my previous blog article, people who have taken advantage of Bentley's Be Employable program have done well in obtaining employment. However, the fact is the economy is still going through a rough patch. As a result, Bentley has extended this popular program through June 30th, 2010. Highlights of this program include free access to select Bentley products, free training and resume posting to individuals who find themselves unemployed...

This is a story about a user who lost his job in today's recession and his solution to getting back on track with a little help from Bentley. To set the scenario up, an unsolicited email came in from Felix Fletcher of Nashville, Tennessee, USA addressed to Steve Rick (Bentley). It involves his experiences with Be Employable, and Bentley Institute's distance learning. NOTE: I have done some light editing on the letter with Felix's permission. Take...

Whenever I'm browsing the internet and I come across an image of a strking building, road, bridge or other infrastructure project I often stop to admire them. One problem though. Often the text that accompany these pictures provide only the briefest of glimpses into how the project design came about. I always want to know more. How did it get started? What were some of the hurdles? What sort of imaginative solutions did it take to complete the project...

Last week I had the distinct pleasure of participating in the "TechiesDay" event here in the Exton office of Bentley Systems sponsored by Carol Rieg, Corporate Foundation Officer and the Chester County Economic Development Council (CCEDC). If you haven't heard of this particular event it is likely you know of something similar to it in your area. Essentially, a group of students from a local high school visits a company like Bentley to learn...

As part of my responsibilities within Be Careers Network , Bentley's higher education support group, I often discuss the value and depth of the online learning resources Bentley provides to schools as part of our Academic Subscription program. From these live webcasts I have developed the following short video clips that describe the most common operations a student or faculty member is likely to perform as they take one of the many online courses...

Bentley Systems has been nominated for a record 10 categories in this year's Construction Computing Awards Affectionately known as " The Hammers " and now in their 4th year, the Construction Computing Awards showcase and reward the technology, tools and solutions for the effective design, construction, maintenance and modification of commercial buildings, residential and social housing and civil engineering projects of all sizes. The categories...

For those of you planning to attend this year's ACADIA conference in Chicago, Illinois, the 22 nd through the 25 th of October, you may be interested to know Bentley is holding another of its extremely popular GenerativeComponents tm workshops just prior to ACADIA event on October 20 st and 21 nd . Attention: The registration deadline has been extended to October 9th. Bentley GenerativeComponents tm is a highly regarded and unique parametric and associative...

For several months now the Be Careers Network has been listening to the academic community voice their need for a "lightweight" primer-type course to quickly orient students to the MicroStation working evironment. Be Careers Network in cooperation with Archway Systems, a long time academic consulting firm, have been working on such a "primer"-style course designed specifically to give the student a good foundation in MicroStation...

As most of you know Bentley unveiled the Bentley V8i line of products in Philadelphia on November 6, 2008. This included, of course, MicroStation V8i. What you didn't know is that a film crew was wandering around the halls capturing vignette videos of the initial reactions to what's new in V8i and how various users picture implementing them in their operations. I've posted the videos on YouTube so you can review first impressions below. For more information...

During the week of February 17-18th regional finalists from all over the country converged on Washington DC to compete in the Future City National Finals Competition. "What is Future City" you ask? It is a part of National Engineering week held annually in Washington DC, an event you have to see to believe. For Future City National Competition the aim of this multiple day event is to pick the best engineering solution to a problem posed...