Have you heard of the “Beyond Beauty” expo happening the other week in Paris?  As part of my role as CATIA social media intern, I got to be there for opening day!

You might wonder why Dassault Systèmes would even be at a ‘beauty’ event.  The answer is simply because the beauty business is not only fragrances, blush and lip gloss; all those products have a common thread, the packaging and design.  This is where Dassault Systèmes comes into play.

All these products need, in order to stand out from each other, a certain Design communicating an emotion, a feeling, an experience that incites consumers to buy them.  Dassault Systèmes provides solutions for the Beauty industry to develop innovative, winning products.

At Dassault Systèmes I hear a lot about the product’s entire value-chain, from concept design to planning and supply processes.  And from what I understand, CATIA offers we we call a “unified industrial design workflow solution to imagine, create, share and experience your future products.”  (Thank you marketing brochure ;-))

For Dassault Systèmes’ Beyond & Beauty stand, our CATIA Creative Designers Team was present, exhibiting a project focused on the creation and design of a perfume bottle and packaging.   They showed what we could do with CATIA and how easy it is to imagine (while you design) a new perfume bottle in few minutes.    Here’s a video showing a bit of their project:

We shared our booth with our partners Noomeo, RaisonPure and Strate College Designers.  While all of them had interesting things to share, I’d like to zoom in on Noomeo.

Noomeo , for those who don’t know, is  a company that makes the hand scanners which can scan various objects directly in 3D, or in other words, easily and quickly help you to visualize in 3D! Noomeo can scan any object and then on the screen a few seconds later, you can see the shape of the object in a cloud of small dots.  After a few scans you’ll have the replica of your object. It’s awesome to see it in action, because it’s truly simple of use. Here’s a little video interview with Noomeo’s André Joly and another of his colleagues.  You’ll get to see the magic in action:

I never suspected blogging about Beauty would be part of my CATIA internship, but what a fun turn!

So what do you think about CATIA and Beauty?

Best,

Caroline

Caroline Heleu is interning for CATIA.

Register here!

Calling all electric car freaks, online community nutters, 3D wackos, product design gurus . . . what have I missed?

We’re organising an event that you’ve all been waiting for! It’s all about sharing ideas on how to develop an electric car online via communities from all over the world.  And it’s happening November 22.

We’ll also be announcing an online project that’s going to happen in collaboration with 40 Fires using our new suite of online products (CATIA V6 Online & 3DSwYm).

We’ve got a fantastic line up of speakers, for example:

• Paul Lomangino from Tesla Motors
• Hugo Spowers from Riversimple/40 Fires;
• Dr Shimizu from SIM Drive;
• Jay Rogers from Local Motors;
• Richard Bruges from Unipart (suppliers looking for a common platform to develop EV components);
• AKKA Technologies;

So what are you waiting for, register today (free) for our Community Based e-Car Development conference at www.3ds.com/CBeCD

The ECF is the 23rd and 24th November, why not go to both?

Yours sustainably,

Jonathan

P.S. For more about this sort of thing, check out my previous posts:

• Open Innovation, Empowerment and Exploitation
• Car development is child’s play!
• Riversimple Urban Car: Simply a Revolution!

Working with the Latin American team at Dassault Systèmes is like going home again.  Some would say that being raised 100 percent in a Spanish household gives me an “insider track” advantage.   Not quite.   Latin America is a fascinating place but it is not a homogenous region.   For anyone doing business here, these facts are critical to know:

• In Latin America, there are 35 countries in a region of nearly 500 million people including Mexico, the Caribbean, Central and South America. The two predominant languages are Spanish and Portuguese.
• According to the Market Intelligence Alliance group, “Mexico City and São Paulo in Brazil are two of the largest cities in the world, each with over 20 million inhabitants in their metropolitan areas. This will increase, as 36 percent of the region’s population is below the age of 15 years.”
• For anyone who thinks Latin Americans speak only Spanish, eat only spicy food (“comida picante” to be accurate) and dance the tango and salsa like ballroom stars, they are in for a big surprise.  (My very own cultural advice.)

So I was quite excited to hear that Dassault Systemes Latin America is led by Marcelo Lemos, president for the region and a man that is no stranger to the company, the industry and the cultural sensitivities needed to navigate in this growing market.

Marcelo’s base is his birthplace of Buenos Aires, Argentina, home to the largest mechanical flower in the world, the Floralis Generica.  Better known as the Steel Flower, Floralis Generica was created by the Buenos Aires born MIT professor and world-known architect, Eduardo Catalano.  The flower weighs 18 tons and is 23 meters high.  Very much the same way airplane wings are designed with CATIA, Lockheed Martin used CATIA to model and test Floralis Generica’s challenging geometrical 6-petal surface.

In a recent visit to the new Dassault Systèmes offices in Buenos Aires, I met with Marcelo to discuss his vision and priorities for the region. Greeted by his friendly and most helpful assistant we sat in his Puerto Madero district office,  a district representing the most successful architectural reconstruction of a port located on the banks of  Rio La Plata.  The entire area has street names and statues dedicated to the role of local women and is marked by a beautiful pedestrian bridge known “El Puente de la Mujer” (A Woman’s Bridge).

Lemos is excited by the recent IDC number updates by Latin America Vice President of Research, Ricardo Villate. In his mid-year forecast, he cites that “Latin America’s Information Technology (IT) growth for the enterprise sector is predicted at 6.6% for this year and this is more than double the expected global average growth of 2.8%.  Villate adds:  “Many new eyes will be focusing their efforts to beginning business in Latin America as well as strengthening their existing business in the region.”

Marcelo points out that DS’ PLM business in the region has grown three times faster than the predicted IDC growth for 2010, and that DS business has grown consistently over the last several years.  The future in Latin America includes continued support for traditional industries such as aerospace, automotive and equipment and machinery, but Lemos is clear:  “ We will turn up the volume on emerging sectors such as energy, consumer product goods, lifesciences and hi-tech.”

From business and cultural perspectives, Dassault Systemes Latin America is well positioned for this plan with offices in Argentina, Brazil and Mexico, and partner representation across the region.  Watch the Latin America space for upswing in 2010 and 2011!

In my experience, there are perhaps two common threads across the Latin American region:  1) the colonial past, and, 2) an uncontrolled passion to win the World Cup.  I lived the last one this summer working at Dassault Systemes.  And ironically so, the World Cup winner (Spain) brought some of us back to the past. But we are still very happy they won.

By the way, what do you think about the Steel Flower?

Hasta pronto,

Elena

Elena Fernandez is the Dassault Systèmes PR manager for Latin Americas.