The Congress On the Future of Engineering Software (COFES) is the engineering software industry’s only annual think tank event that brings executives from design, engineering, architectural, development, and technology companies together to understand the role engineering technology will play in the future survival and success of business. COFES is defined by organizers Cyon Research as the following:

• a think tank where great minds come together to discuss best practices and to share ideas for managing change;
• a technology summit that promotes discussion and problem-solving among industry thought-leaders, analysts, and customers;
• a business conference that delivers practical strategies for achieving financial success in the engineering and design technology sector; and
• an informal environment where business leaders and technology providers can meet to identify and address key industry issues and challenges.

Cyon Research Corporation, host of the COFES, announced that Omid Moghadam and Bo Burlinham will keynote COFES 2010. Geomagic Corporation is sponsoring Bo Burlingham’s keynote: “Got mojo?” Burlingham, editor-at-large of Inc. Magazine and chairman of the Small Giants Community (www.smallgiants.org), is a brilliant commentator on the nature of business and how it can be harmonious with the pursuit of greatness.

“Burlingham’s message is particularly relevant to the software entrepreneurs in the COFES audience,” said COFES co-founder and visionary Joel Orr. “Understanding the relative benefits and disadvantages of size is powerful.”

Burlingham’s book, Small Giants: Companies That Choose To Be Great Instead of Big, was a finalist for the 2006 Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year award. According to Cyon Research President and CEO Brad Holtz, Burlingham’s most recent book, co-authored with Norm Brodsky, The Knack: How Street-Smart Entrepreneurs Learn to Handle Whatever Comes Up, “…is a must read for any current or prospective entrepreneur.”

Omid Moghadam’s keynote, “From product informatics to bio-informatics,” will discuss how software vendors from design and engineering fields have a disruptive opportunity in bioinformatics.

According to Moghadam, “…modest successes in developing software for biological modeling have never made it to the market, since any company that was able to show success has promptly transformed itself into a drug discovery firm, instead of becoming a software tools provider to the industry. This is akin to a company with a CAD/CAM package deciding to turn itself into an airframe manufacturer.”

As an inventor (he holds 32 patents) and leader straddling both the engineering and healthcare domains, Moghadam is in a unique position to address the applicability of the resources of the engineering software community to the developing needs of the explosively growing field of bioinformatics and genomics.

Event details
COFES 2010, the 11th annual conference, will take place April 15-18 in Scottsdale, Ariz. COFES is an invitation-only event. Find out more about the 11th Annual COFES and apply for an invitation at http://cofes.com.