Thank you for making the 2012 Great Lakes Regional User Meeting our largest and best ever! Our Michigan meeting was held on October 18, with pre-meeting seminars on October 17, at the Inn at St. Johns in Plymouth.

Over 400 people were in attendance to view a record 30 presentations in the Abaqus and Isight tracks, including 8 partner breakout sessions, which greatly enriched the content of the day. Many excellent customer presentations were held, including a rich Isight track assembled by Dwayne Dutton. Our plenary session speakers were outstanding, including customer presentations by Bill Resh of Chrysler Group LLC who presented on using virtual analysis to achieve efficiency, and Wai Nguyen of General Motors who presented on parametric engine block DOE and optimization using Abaqus and Isight.

A wine and cheese reception was held at the end of the day with over half of the attendees staying for a raffle of many different prizes and a chance to socialize with colleagues and partners. A new strategy was implemented this year, entitled "Passport to Prizes," which allowed our partners to distribute small cards to our attendees with a single question to answer. Attendees with correct answers would have their card stamped by the partner and turn it in for a chance at the raffle items. This strategy was executed with great success and helped to introduce attendees to all of our partners and to facilitate helpful discussions.

Thank you to our speakers for their interesting and insightful presentations. Thank you to everyone joining us again or for the first time this year. And finally, thank you to our partners and our staff for contributing to this successful meeting.

See you next year!

The SIMULIA Great Lakes Team

Note: We have several SIMULIA presentations from the RUM available! Please email us at SIMULIA.GreatLakes.Info@3ds.com if you would like any of them sent to you.