When the 1980s came around, CAD tools moved onto expensive UNIX workstations that cost on average $50,000 per seat. But the shift from UNIX workstations to personal computers made the software accessible to millions more engineers and consumers, significantly raising its popularity in the 1990s. The price per seat became much cheaper, hardware demands lightened, and learning times decreased. What once required specialized hardware and heavy machines could now run on an office-style desktop and be learned in a few months. 

Today, CAD software is more than just design software. It has become a global community of designers, engineers, creators, executives, and students who share knowledge, solve problems, and are passionate to learn about the latest technologies. CAD has a lot of potential, enabling the creation of almost anything, from large industrial machinery to small dumbbells and even advanced humanoid robotics. 

The advancements in CAD technology are just getting better each year, making it accessible to people like academics, children, and DIY enthusiasts instead of just designers and engineers. Technologies such as AI, large language models, and machine learning are paving the way to AI CAD that can provide design assistance and generative design. This will allow users to become more efficient and save more time, improving the user experience. 

The revolution in design is heading into a new age that will, without a doubt, empower the next generation of creators everywhere. 

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Go through the article to know some of the main reasons why visitor management software is required these days.

1. Proactive system: Right visitor management software helps in keeping track of the visitors entering and leaving the company premises. This software also stores comprehensive details of the visitors like digital signatures and facial captures during their check-ins.
2. Low maintenance costs: the traditional way of managing visitors included registers and pens. This method is not a one-time investment but visitor management software is a long time investment. This smart system also provides other advantages over the traditional method like employing the front desk staff members in some other important areas for enhanced productivity.
3. Enhances brand image: having a visitor management system helps in creating a positive impression on the visitors who come to pay visits to the company premises. The brand image and company’s reputation often depends on the creation of the first impression. Utilizing such effective software also focuses on leaving a polished, professional first impression on the visitors.
4. Power of automation: automated visitor management software is a boon for organizations that often handle large volumes of visitors. It gets very complicated to store all the visitors’ data manually; digital and cloud-based systems automate the entire process and eliminate the hassles regarding manual data entry.
5. Access data from anywhere: the front desk staff can easily access visitor’s data from anywhere. All you need to do is log in to your account using the credentials given to you.
6. Real-time notifications: this cloud-based system also helps in sending notifications like an SMS or an email to the host informing them about a visitor’s exact arrival.
7. Increased accountability: systems like these come in handy in case of emergency situations. In the case of immediate evacuations, a visitor management system can help us know the exact details of visitors residing in the facility.
8. Data protection: unlike the traditional method, this cloud-based system safeguards the visitor details and prevents possible data breach or hacking. The visitor details are stored in the cloud and can be accessed only by the authorized person.

With such a smart and efficient system providing so much to the visitors, it should be installed immediately in almost every possible organization and utilized to the fullest. Installing systems like visitor management software is a boon not just for the organization and it’s front desk staff, but also to the customers or the visitors who pay visits to the company premises.

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Drew: You started your career in ad sales at the Wall Street Journal. How important was that experience to your future roles in marketing?

Elissa: I would say the value to me as a marketer was extraordinary. I wasn’t really cut out for sales, but what got me excited about my job in sales was understanding the Wall Street Journal audience, how it compared to our big competitors, and our strategy in talking to our subscribers and to our advertisers. That’s when I realized what really turns me on is marketing and marketing information. I often tell people starting out in their marketing careers that experience of being a sales person is extremely valuable because you really understand what’s on the mind of a buyer, how to persuade, how to sell, and how to close. And that not only helps you as a marketer, but also helps you in your relationship with sales people as you market.

And I bet you are so much more empathetic with your sales teams than your average marketer.

Elissa: I feel like I have a lot of empathy because I have been there. And I think it’s extraordinarily valuable as a marketer to understand the sales journey from the top of the funnel all the way to the end.

You’ve been at Tableau for 10 years and nearly half of that as CMO. Can we talk about the advantages of staying in one place?

Elissa: The advantages are definitely that you get to be deep, to understand things richly, to build relationships with your colleagues and your customers. And you get to see this evolution in what you are trying to accomplish and to see how things that you seeded months or even years ago are blossoming. You also get to see evolutionary cycles and determine when you don’t need to do certain things anymore. For me, it’s been a really interesting journey. When I joined ten years ago we were about 40 people. Now we are like over 3,200 people. It’s really been like several different companies!

Wow, that’s such huge growth. It must be tricky to stay fresh and continue to drive change. What’s your secret?

Elissa: Well, two ways. Number one, I look at change as a fact of life. That we always need fresh ideas and don’t ever get comfortable with the way we’ve always done things. If we’re not changing then something’s not quite right. I have an open mind about change and tell my team to roll with it too, to try new things and be at peace with whatever happens.

And the other way?

Elissa: The other important thing is to recognize that as a person who’s been there long time, you may not be the freshest source of ideas. So as a leader, long-term employee and agent of change, there are times that I just need to listen, keep my mouth shut and be open to the idea that something that sounded crazy three years ago might be exactly what we need now.

Listening is really an art form in itself.

Elissa: It is. It’s important to listen rather than judge and offer up all the reasons you think something won’t work. I’m a big believer in a question-oriented approach. Rather than shutting down the conversation with negative comments, I’ll ask: have you thought about how we could solve that, have you thought about this, have we considered this? This lets them know that I’m interested in their ideas and that we can find ideas that solve problems we couldn’t solve before.

Do you have a superpower?

Elissa: There is one thing that I just used to resist about myself but now I embrace fully — I’m an enthusiastic and optimistic person. I’ve realized over the years that enthusiasm goes a long way towards getting things done because it produces energy. I bring energy to meetings. I tend to be enthusiastic and positive – saying let’s do it and feeling like we can do it. And though it’s not necessarily a superpower, my enthusiasm does seem to help propel teams and initiatives forward.

I share your enthusiasm for enthusiasm!

Elissa: I think people want to get stuff done. That’s what business is about. We all are trying to achieve results for our companies and for our customers. Of course, you need smart analytics, good business judgment, thoughtful strategy about why and who and when, but once you are ready to go, go at it with energy and enthusiasm. Use your resources to a hundred percent of their effectiveness.

What’s your mission at Tableau, and has it evolved over the years?

Elissa: Our mission is to help people see and understand data. So certainly we are all about easy and friendly data analytics. I think the thing that has evolved is that we’ve become a company that can serve that up at scale. We help large organizations and massive groups of people use data to the level and extent that they want to, whether that’s a deep data scientist all the way to a frontline person who needs to find out how things are going on the factory floor and make an adjustment to speed up some machine. We can help people work with data safely, securely and at scale.

Tell me about your role as CMO at Tableau?

Elissa: It’s the best job in the world. At Tableau, marketing is all about working closely with Sales, Development and our Operations to grow the community of Tableau users in their journey of using data. So that stretches from working hand in glove with our product strategy team on our development side to define our overall messaging to working with sales to find the best prospects and growth customers. Demand generation is a huge part of our business because we started out as a tool that individuals often bought. It was almost like a consumer product. That’s how we disrupted the market. Now we’re showing large enterprises that scalable, nimble analytics that people love is achievable at scale. As a marketing team, we cover everything from above the funnel all the way through the funnel – from communications to solutions marketing.

You’re covering a lot of ground as CMO, aren’t you?

Elissa: We have a pretty wide coverage, but we have a lot of great partnerships across Tableau including our product development team, our sales team, our operations team, HR, finance, our channel team, and so on. Tableau is a very collaborative organization. So there are plenty of things that I don’t cover that another CMO might. But because we’re collaborative, we get involved in discussions.

Are there areas involving communications you won’t touch?

Elissa: Yes. We really do focus on outward facing activities. It’s a small example, but early on people used to want us to plan holiday parties, and we said, ‘No, that’s an internal thing. We can give you advice, but that’s really better for HR department because that’s not our audience.’ Our audience is mostly external. We do love our employees and especially how they help our customers and help us promote to customers and prospects. But we are very much focused on the people in our markets – it’s the people in analyst, executive, IT and business operation positions.

You’ve had quite a ride at Tableau.

Elissa: Well, I am so lucky, Drew. I have had almost 10 years of just an amazing journey. Every year has been fun and interesting and we’ve accomplished so much and we’ve been challenged by so much. I would say taking a company from sub $5 million in revenue to a run rate of nearly $1 billion is awesome to me. I feel excited by what we accomplished. We went public. I got to be on the balcony at the opening bell at the New York Exchange – I mean, that’s such a memorable moment! My old boss, our founding CEO, was so supportive despite my bouts of lack of confidence. He would say, ‘you were the right person that came along at the right time for the right job.’ And now I’m enjoying working with and learning from our new CEO.

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Blogging software has settled down quite a bit, but it can still be daunting to new bloggers. Choosing a blogging platform is one of the first decisions you’ll make (right after deciding whether you should be blogging at all). It’s a choice that can set you up for success or frustration. There are many things to consider when choosing where to blog. All of the major platforms have their particular strengths and weaknesses. Each blogger has his or her own priorities and needs. Finding the best match between them can take a lot of time and energy.

Even those who’ve been blogging for a while need to periodically review their tools to make sure they still make sense. If you started a blog years ago, you might be wondering if there’s a better new solution out there than your current platform. You might wonder if your platform is getting in the way of greater success with your blog. Or you might just be ready for a change. It can be a time consuming process, figuring out what’s available now, and then sorting out if it’s worth making a switch.

Because we’re all about providing helpful advice, we’ve just written a white paper, sponsored by OverBlog, which reviews eight of the most popular blogging platforms across the nine most important criteria for blogging success.

The white paper takes a “start with the end in mind” approach by first clarifying why you want to blog. It looks at the different types of blogs, ranging from personal and hobby blogs to corporate blogging. It reviews a number of free, commercial and “hybrid” blogging platforms according to their strengths and weaknesses in areas like SEO, social integration, customization, cost, and ease of use.

There’s no “perfect” blogging solution out there, but there probably is a best fit solution for you. This white paper is there to take some of the time and effort out of figuring that out.

Check it out at How To Choose a Blogging Platform. We hope you find it useful.

The post How to Choose a Blogging Platform appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

I commented on the article, but wanted to open the discussion here as well. Here’s what I had to say:

“Great article, Doug. The one thing that struck me during reading was that exclusive live rights cannot hold under the pressure of an audience of citizen journalists. The law is going to change because of microblogging and mobile technologies.

And it should. As the primary source for an individuals media shifts from mainstream to niche and from traditional to within one’s network, no longer can organizations, events or governing bodies expect to maintain a stranglehold on the rights to what they do.

If you weren’t in the crowd at the NCAA Baseball Regionals here in Louisville last spring and weren’t watching on TV, Brian Bennett was your source for information. This time, the NCAA won. Next time, someone (say Jason Falls) sitting in the crowd and not subject to press box rules, might be Twittering it. As long as people know where to go, the information will get out. And with 5,000 people sitting there, chances are, I won’t be the only one Twittering the event.

It will take a lawsuit and someone willing to fight for our right to be citizen journalists. But we’ll win. Mark my word.

Here’s what I think will evolve over the next 2-5 years as a result of the rise of citizen journalists and niche influencers equipped with texting, Twittering and mobile communications conduits:

1. Conferences, events, governing bodies and companies who are “it-getters” will be lauded by us as such and keep lines of communication (inbound, outbound and sideways) wide open.
2. Conference, events, governing bodies and companies who don’t will see sudden plummets in credibility and popularity unless they devise alternative communications methods which engage the users rather than alienate them. (Keep Twitterers occupied during conferences by ensuring your content is engaging.)
3. Someone, somewhere will be fined, thrown out or otherwise penalized for using his or her cell phone at a baseball game, a convention or a public gathering for a corporation and sue the bejeezus out of the sponsoring agency. With the right attorney, exclusivity will be a thing of the past. He who Tweets fastest will win.

I won’t offer any specific predictions, but my friends will tell you who the plaintiff in No. 3 is most likely to be. I’m just too much of a smartass to stop reporting because some conference official or security guard tells me to. I’ll Twitter until they arrest me, then Twitter that, just to prove a point.

What are your predictions for Web 2.0’s effect on exclusivity and the law. And do you know any good lawyers?

IMAGE: Me Twittering the Baja. Will I be allowed to in the future? (Well, yes. It’s in Mexico. They have no laws there, but that’s not the point.)

[tags]exclusive rights, exclusivity, media ethics, media law, microblogging, citizen journalism, citizen journalists, Web 2.0, software, revolution[/tags]

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