Getting Approval to Attend the World Event

Are you frustrated trying to convince your boss that you need to go to the PTC/USER World Event? Well, you may wish to try out the following letter on your stubborn supervisor; it has proven effective to get approval for some people to come to the conference.

Here's one approach you can take:

1. Review the information on this site. Take a look at the company attendance list and see if you can find some of your competitors there. Read through the agenda and pick out some presentations relevant to your organization. Also, you should look at training, especially the e-Learning options available to you at the conference.

2. Edit the letter for your situation and send it to your boss.

3. Meet with your boss to review the letter and talk about the benefits of attending. Mention the sessions you feel are important to your company, as well as any competitors that are already taking advantage of the conference.

You can tell us about your own success story when we see you in Orlando!

Letter to My Boss

Dear <Insert Your Boss' Name Here>:

I know you are very busy but I need to talk to you about something I feel is very important for our team's success.

I wish to attend an educational conference in June: the PTC/USER World Event. Attending is vital for ensuring we maximize our return on investment in PTC software. It will also help me increase my own value to our organization.

By participating, I will meet with many other Pro/ENGINEER and Windchill users from some of the top product development companies in the world. I will learn practical skills from PTC staff members. There will be over eighty technical sessions covering everything, from modeling and drafting, to simulation, sheet metal and beyond. Not only will I learn features and functions, but also techniques to address process challenges.

Training is a huge focus of the PTC/USER World Event. There is the free Precision Learning classroom training on surfacing and behavioral modeling. I can take any course in PTC's e-Learning portfolio containing over 300 hours of training. The new Best Practice Series offers extended learning on product design collaboration and system-level planning and design for platforms.

I will explore PTC product direction, including the new Wildfire 3.0 release and how it will impact our company. I will visit dozens of partner companies offering solutions that could radically improve our processes or even create new capabilities we don't possess today.

When I return from the conference, I will be able to use the CD-ROM to share what I learned so everyone in our group will benefit.

Completing all of these tasks individually could take weeks, but at the conference, I can do everything in a few days and save time and money. The free PTC training is worth hundreds of dollars alone, so you know that we are getting a great deal.

Let's take a look at the return on investment. If I can boost my own productivity by just 5%, a very conservative number, that translates to two hours per week, or 100 hours per year. Imagine how those savings would multiply by sharing information with everyone in the department.

Attendance costs include the registration fee and travel expenses, plus a couple days away from work, but these are small potatoes compared to our design system expenditures. PTC software is integral to our organization's success--doesn't it make sense to spend a few dollars to make sure we get the most out of our systems?

June is the only chance this year to take advantage of these opportunities. I hope you can see how attending this conference will make a significant difference in the benefits we derive from using Pro/ENGINEER, and that you approve this small but necessary investment in our future. Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

<your name here>