Having spent a few days in Scandinavia last week training our new users from the Jøtul, Norway and also visiting our partners Lars and Marianne Lüning in Sweden, I hoped to come home and enjoy a warmer weekend. Having however spent the weekend scraping the snow off the car and having snowball fights in sub zero temperatures I think I should have stayed away for a few more days.
Luckily the office is far more comfortable so lets reflect on the month gone by. Yours truly has been pretty busy hopping around Europe, starting with an exciting week at the Cersaie, Italy at the end of September. As I said before, last years show was huge and this year it only got bigger. Attendance broke the 100,000 mark and with 32% of that number being international visitors, again, new records were set. The numbers really highlight Cersaie as the key international event for ceramic tile and bathroom furnishing sectors.
Most companies in the ceramic tiling sector had a line representing wood floor imitations, while the furnishing has seen a mixture of inspirations from the past and also some excellent futuristic designs.
The Loop outdoor shower from Idiha Design really caught my eye as well as "Cup" Artceram washbasin line.
Personally I found the stand from British Ceramic Tile (see below) to be very attractive mixing some of the great British landmarks with beautiful designs. I put up a few photos here I snapped up at Cersaie and also a few during the event on our Twitter page @PCadOverseas , but keep an eye for our upcoming international Facebook site, where I will be uploading the entire album.
Our stand was very busy too and our visitors were also very geographically diverse. It was a first time I had to call upon all of my language skills in one day, meeting with users and potential customers form all over former Yugoslavia, numerous German speaking countries as well as far corners of the world, such as Australia, Alaska, India, Brazil, Russia, Iran, to name just a few, where I got a chance to finally put my English to good use.
We also had our representatives meeting with the biggest names at the show to insure that in the future we can bring these great names and new designs and add them alongside our already huge Palette CAD catalogues.
Speaking of Palette CAD and improvements ties me nicely into our next topic, the unveiling of the Palette CAD 8 at our User Days event in Dresden, Germany. October 11th and 12th saw some 200 users get their hands on the early German version of the program. Here they were treated to two full days of presentations and workshops, showing off the new stylish design of the version 8, how it ticks as well as some of the new features in the programs, such as Palette PLAY. The development team is now busy working out the final kinks before we can start work on the international versions of the program, aiming to be distributed world wide next Summer.
Below is the German teaser entitled " Now it starts" shown at Dresden but I will be bringing you more information and a more in-depth review in the coming months blogs so watch this space.
Described in the video, following the on-screen order, as: Professional, Flexible, Exact, Impressive, Intuitive, Fast and Simple.
Finally last week I was in Fredrikstad, Norway, holding a days basic stoves and fireplaces training for our friends at Jøtul, specialists for cast iron stoves and fireplaces. They now have a team dedicated to designing with Palette CAD and I will be awaiting their work to show off on our future Facebook page.
Coming very shortly to our blog will be Tip of the Month feature providing quick tips and tricks for our international Palette CAD users. In the mean time I will leave you all with a challenge of designing a warm, homely room that Santa and all his little helpers would be proud of.
Above is some food for thought so get inspired and send your work to egrabic@palettecad.com for marks and a chance to get yourself and your company a mention in future social media material. Above all, and as always, have fun with it!
Greetings from Stuttgart,
Your Palette CAD-Blog Team
