After months of anticipation, this year’s keynote presentation was an interview with super-entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson of the Virgin Group. Instead of Barbara Walters or Katie Couric, Richard Branson was interviewed by none other then Jeff Ray, the CEO of SolidWorks. The audience made up of a few thousand SolidWorks geeks from around the world were first treated with a brief video highlighting milestones in the amazing history of Richard Branson and his accomplishments. Then, amid thunderous applause Sir Richard Branson was introduced to the waiting audience by Jeff Ray. Richard Branson made his way to one the two black leather chairs set up on the stage. With Jeff Ray sitting on the opposite chair, the interview commenced.
From the first question, you can tell that this was not the same canned questions that are normally asked of Richard Branson. Jeff Ray asked Richard Branson about his very first public speaking experience when he was only 17 years old in London. Apparently, two minutes into his speech in London, he became flustered and left the stage vowing never to do a public speech again.  The great thing about the question is that the addressed the reason for the sit down interview rather than an actual speech by Richard Branson. I think the format also gave better insight into the man that from selling albums from the truck of his car that went on the form one of the most exciting companies in the world.
Obviously, not being an engineering or designer, Sir Richard Branson was not going to provide some great insight in the SolidWorks design process. But Jeff Ray did a great job of asking follow up questions that helped turn the conversation to some of the design aspects of his many ventures. When Richard Branson spoke about the design for the airline seats, I felt it provided a look into the mind of a man that strives for being the best at any cost. Sometime ago Virgin had spent a considerable amount of money design new seats for the entire fleet of planes but just prior to their release it was discovered that a competitor had installed seats with many of the same design elements. Most companies at that point would have just continued on with the release plans but not Virgin. Rather than follow a competitor, it was decided that the entire stock of seats would be scrapped and a new design would be created. This gave Virgin an opportunity to readdress the design issue and create something that was leaps ahead of the competition.
One moment in particular created an eruption of laughter when Richard Branson describes the design for the Virgin Cola bottle with Pamela Anderson. This created a design issue when of course it was desired to have the shape of the bottle match the shape of Pamela Anderson but the only problem was when the bottle kept tipping over. The question that came to my mind was, “Where do I sign up for that design job?”
If you are a reader of The SolidWorks Geek, then you know that Jeff Ray put the call out online for questions to be submitted for Richard Branson. Due to time constraints, they were only able to get to two of the submitted questions. One of the questions asked, was submitted by a fellow twitter resident Marijn. Overall, I think it was a great sit down interview with Richard Branson. I have mentioned before that I admire Richard Branson and what he has done. A high school dropout, creating a multi-billion multi-national business empire from a very modest beginnings is an amazing story.

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