We were talking about the Solid Edge UI on twitter a few days ago and it seems a few didn’t know about a large number of userinterface (UI) advancements that occurred with ST3. I was thinking about doing a post on the customizable ribbon and mentioned this in our GTAC forum. Some thought it was really the radial menu that was the big thing. In any case, you can’t show the UI without good video.

I was in the middle of suggest the folks that do our Solid Edge Tip and Tricks videos do some more on the ST3 UI when I stumbled across this great video by Solid Mastermind. They are one of the new breed of companies taking full advantage of social media. Not only do they have a blog, you can find them in everyplace from YouTube to Twitter to Linkedin to Facebook. They even have an iTunes podcast.

If you want to learn more about them and their social media efforts, I did a interview below. Definitely check out their video as it does a much better job than I could have done. Its filmed in HD so pick the 720p option and show it full screen.

Can you tell me about Solid Mastermind and Ingenea and what your company does?

Until early 2009, Ingenea was a Siemens channel partner for Solid Edge. In fact we had been helping companies evaluate, install and implement Solid Edge since it was first released in 1996, as well as providing on-going training, support and consultancy.

Since 2007 we had been looking at how we could really embrace the World Wide Web and social media within the business to the benefit of our clients. We saw how these tools were being used in other industries and recognised the potential to revolutionise how we operated and delivered services, and knew the same could be applied to the worldwide community of Solid Edge professionals whilst providing an improved service and saving them money.

So we looked at what was being provided for Solid Edge in terms of community, user group, on line services including training, documentation, forums, Q&A, help desk, webinars, etc. and how this was being delivered using the latest web based technology.

Nowhere was this being provided in a single, dedicated, focused and coherent environment, if at all, so to service this need Solid Mastermind was born

In 2008 we also started our SynchronousTechnology.net blog to coincide with the initial release of Solid Edge with Synchronous Technology. This blog keeps users abreast of the latest news and information in this area.

You are based in England. Do you mainly work with Solid Edge customers there?

Yes we are based in England and our offices are on the outskirts of London but the fact is, we could be based anywhere, in any country in the world. We’re using the World Wide Web to its full potential to deliver our services.

Historically when previously operating as a traditional software reseller logistically we could only work locally and our long established clients are mainly within the UK. But our current on-line business model allows us to operate across the world.

Solid Mastermind serves clients worldwide and is currently used in: Australia, Belgium, Finland, Germany, India, Israel, Korea, Norway, Philippines, Spain, Switzerland, The Netherlands, UK, and USA. The geographical diversity of our clients is continually increasing as word spreads about Solid Mastermind and we welcome new members.

What kind of services do you offer?

We combine our knowledge and expertise with technology to deliver flexible, efficient but highly effective services for Solid Edge clients.

Solid Mastermind is a comprehensive on-line resource and community for Solid Edge which includes video training courses, tutorials, tips and tricks, support, ask the expert, question & answer vault, best practices, utilities and more. In a nutshell, everything to help companies minimise the risk whilst maximising the return from investing in Solid Edge

We should also mention IngeneaSoft, our software development division. Over the years our team have worked on many bespoke development projects with Solid Edge customers in order to streamline their workflow or achieve a specific task, ultimately saving them valuable time and money. More recently we launched a series of commercial applications which solve many different problems from eliminating repetitive tasks through to simple and easy to use data management. There are a few additional products being launched in the near future too. All focused on Solid Edge of course.

I noticed your web page mentions Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and Podcasts for iTunes. How is social media changing how you work?

Social media is an integral part of how we now operate. It provides vital communication channels for our business. Most importantly it allows us to communicate with our clients on their terms by adopting any one of the social platforms that they may wish to use.

Using social media our clients and followers can also consume our content on hardware devices of their choice such as a smart phone, iPad, iPhone, Google TV and more, even when they are away from their computer.

All businesses should be using social media tools. To reinforce this view just last year there was a news story about the fact that Facebook had overtaken Google for the first time to become the most popular website in the US. Facebook is now referring more traffic to other sites than Google. That’s enough proof to show that social media is huge and needs to be taken very seriously from a business point of view.