Roughly 300 gather in Essen, Germany, in former coal mine
ESSEN, Germany—Last week, FARO kicked off the first of its 3D documentation user meetings, gathering more than 300 attendees to talk about the latest in the company’s technological advances and those of its partner companies. The event took place May 17 and 18, here in Zollverein, at the the Zeche Zollverein world heritage site, one of the last coal mines to have been in use (until the ’70s ) locally, which now has been converted into a museum with some congress facilities. While the venue is not ideally suited for a conference with exhibition space, it was interesting to see the original coal extracting machinery and equipment from the plant.
It is a fascinating venue for those interested in machinery and heavy equipment technology; the venue has many huge halls, but all have been converted to art and technology exhibitions. The event took place in the hall named the Red Dot Design Museum and there were a few people milling about who were simply there to see the exhibits.
Roughly 40 speakers used the presentation space to expound upon the latest trends in 3D imaging and data capture. Dieter Spath, head of Institute Fraunhofer IAO and IAT University of Stuttgart, keynoted the event, speaking of the way that 3D imaging represents a new way of understand and documenting the world around us. There were also a number of product demonstrations and technical workshops.
On significant announcement was that FARO is holding a software development contest, which will come with a significant prize. SPAR will be following up on this shortly.
Organizers reported that more than 60 percent of attendees were from Germany, with the rest coming from 19 other countries, largely Switzerland, Austria, Holland, France, and Spain. Partner companies in attendance included Autodesk, Geomagic, Amberg, Duwe3D, Gexcel, Alice Labs, Pointools, Siteco, IC IDO, Rapidform, Lupos3D, Carlson, ATS, IGI, Laser Scanning Europe and Kubit, many of them resellers of FARO equipment or software vendors with partnership agreements.
FARO plans a similar North American user meeting for the first quarter of 2012 in Florida, location to be determined.
