Be Connected, 2009 online seminars

Beginning change of formate of the annual Bentley conference, arguing that the global crisis could affect its users traveling to the United States in May, the proposal of online seminars was launched in order to reach not only those who would attend the event but those who do not have the ease of spending $ 2,000 that could cost a trip of this nature.

"With more than 150 of best practices and product seminars, the Be Connected series of online seminars is the best way for professionals and business infrastructure leaders to keep up to date on the latest trends in practices and technology, without the waste of time and expenses of traveling to a conference ",

said Bentley marketing manager, Ed Mueller.

"This is content with a 'professional conference quality', brought to your desk for free"

novelty

Thus, from June to November more than 150 seminars have been programmed that can be enjoyed from the comfort of the desk and with a regular connection to the Internet.

At the beginning it did not catch my attention, especially because I was excited about the trip I usually attend, but now that the functionality has been shown I am thinking that if this is successful it could be that Bentley decides to permanently change the periodicity of the conference or at least its duration to focus on the Be Inspired which is barely a couple of days. This terrified me more.

But note that Bentley has offered to re-give Bentley Institute accredited certificates to those who take the seminars. Besides, it is possible that they make them available online to see as many times as necessary, which gives it a more significant value than the 25 minutes of a live conference.

Types of seminars

There are three types:

About good practices

Presented by infrastructure professionals from around the world, these sessions provide a project perspective on best practices for the design, construction and operations of specific types of infrastructure projects, including the series of seminars on each of the following Topics: bridges, cadastre and land development, communications, electricity and gas companies, mining and metals, oil and gas, rail and transit sector, roads, water and wastewater.

About Bentley products

Presented by Bentley's top product executives and designed for both current and future users, these technology-focused sessions showcase the latest features and capabilities of the V8i software portfolio for sustainable infrastructure.

And so?

The design they have given to the Be Connected interface is not bad, although the abuse of javascript has gone to the extreme of not testing it well in different browsers and it was necessary for me to use Safari due to so much functionality. I prefer Chrome but Safari never fails ... even so, even using IE I had a hard time getting the "Register" button working which reminded me how late the night is and that the disease that only Melquiades could cure in Macondo could be bothering my browser ... or my neurons.

Getting the column header sorting to work and keeping an eye out for popup windows is most annoying. Despite the fact that very stable connections are common in the United States, the functionalities cannot be designed exclusively for this type of user. Still many of us prefer 512 and it is enough for us, most have also managed to solve basic navigation issues with less money and with better messages so as not to lose patience.

We are sorry, some error has occurred!

The error has been logged and will be reviewed by our technical staff. In the meantime try the request again or Write / Call us for further assistance options.

In short, the functionality leaves much to be desired, even after being able to register a cloud of mail arrived in my tray and a couple of days later an unforgivable apology, but once understanding the stubbornness of the webmaster, the wealth of information makes up for.

The search can be done by "all", "live" and even "on demand". Then the list can be sorted by heading, either by date, organization or subject.

Here is an example of seminars in the geospatial area:

Here you can see the Rest of seminars.

Yes, as you have seen, they are all in English (just like the lectures). Let's see if our friends from Amsterdam or Mexico lead this type of services for Spanish speakers, more so now that they have announced Power Civil for Spain and Power Civil for Latinamerica.

For now I have registered in the first, to draw a conclusion then as the webmaster bad taste of combining aspx with javascript to the beast is not removed, even though I already took an adrenaline.

Ah ... the Adrenaline: delicious!