Last Saturday, May 16th 2015, the new SolidWorks User Group was born in the world. I have attended the opening meeting of SWUGN KOREA and I want to share my experience with rest of SolidWorks fans.
Last year was definitely poor year for me on events related to SolidWorks community. Working at Samsung Ukraine R&D Institute with already-manufactured devices, I have no need to touch the CAD stuff. But the old passion keeps holding me, and I was nostalgically viewing the SolidWorks User Group Network official website (www.swugn.org), searching for a miracle... And noticed the announcement of First (Opening) Meeting of SolidWorks User Group Korea in Seoul in the fancy book center Booktique on Nonhyeon-dong.
Luckily I am in Seoul these days. Even more, I stay at the hotel few dongs away from the meeting place! I felt I just can't stop. So I called my good friend Se-Young (Shawn) Yun from SolidWorks Korea and asked him to pick me on the event.
We arrived something around 1.30pm and I saw a small yet convenient library-like room with around 50 people inside. Most of them don't speak English very well, but I was introduced very quickly and we got our places to listen to opening speech.
Every attendee received a gift of What's New in SolidWorks 2015 book in Korean. I also got mine :)
Waiting for official session to start, I was introduced to Donghyeon (Daniel) Won, the Group leader, Certified
SolidWorks Expert from 2012 and the founder of Korea's most active and
productive online community - PlaySOLIDWORKS
(http://cafe.naver.com/playsw and https://www.facebook.com/PlaySOLIDWORKS). Daniel told me he founded the community in 2010 in Naver, Korea's largest and most well-known web search and entertainment portal. Now PlaySOLIDWORKS community counts 19.000 active members and is the center of all SolidWorks-related events in Republic of Korea. This year he decided to transform the community into an official User Group.
I have got my SWUGN KOREA membership card, and the session has been started.
After the short story of PlaySOLIDWORKS community and the declaration of goals of a newly-created User Group, the technical sessions started. What's New in SolidWorks 2015, how to use PropertyManager Editor, Productivity in Assemblies - everything was prepared with passion and joy.
Community members traditionally asked questions, and even a lovely child of one of the colleagues present at the meeting looked interested :)
After the meeting in a coffee break I got acquainted with mostly everyone present and felt I am finally back to place and time I love.
SolidWorks User Group Korea has the amazing future. Its potential of a new-born child is in good hands! The next meeting is not scheduled yet, but I am already waiting for the show going on. And now I am seriously thinking about some sort special event we organize for Korean SolidWorks fans this year.
Last but not least, I would like to say thanks to Se-Young Yun for taking me to the event, escorting and translating key things, Daniel Won for amazing meeting, the group itself and some photos I used for this post and to everyone I met there.
