Things to do in Houston, TX before and after 3DEXPERIENCE World 2025!
Before 2023, I’ve never been Houston, TX. It’s long been on my list of places to visit customers. In June 2023, I finally travelled to this great city where I visited several customers and presented at the local user group. In early 2024, I again found myself in town, this time to visit extended family. Well, it’s 2025, and I am again (again) travelling to Houston. This time is for 3DEXPERIENCE World 2025 (#3DXW25)!
If you are also attending 3DXW25, here’s a list of things you can do in Houston before or after the event. As always, none of these places or sites are endorsed. This is just a list of interesting things to see and do while visiting.
Buffalo Bayou – Including Buffalo Bayou Park, Downtown area, and a 10-mile stretch between Port of Houston Turning and Shepard Drive. The Galleria – “Luxurious shopping destination”. Post HTX – Shopping center, art exhibition, views of the city and much more. Chinatown– Incredible and thriving area of Asian culture, including the Dunhaung Plaza and Sterling Plaza. East End of East Downtown (EaDo) – Neighborhood with tons of places to dine and explore just East of Downtown.
Enjoying the region
Galveston – Coastal town with a rich history. Brazos Bend State Park – State Park with 37 miles of trails, fishing and other outdoor activities. Sam Houston National Forest – About 50 miles north, with hiking, camping and exploration of nature Fredericksburg – Quaint town; see a different side of Texas with craft breweries and eateries, including German influences and Tuscany-like landscapes.
Interesting facts about Houston
Houston has the largest downtown tunnel system in the US (and it is air conditioned!).1 It was founded on August 30, 1836, by brothers Augustus Chapman Allen and John Kirby Allen.2 The first public television station in the US began broadcasting in 1953 from Houston.3
See you in Houston, TX at 3DEXPERIENCE World 2025!
Show off your Certificates of Completion without overloading your LinkedIn profile
My previous article about C.V., resumes and LinkedIn profile covered general information about LinkedIn profile. But, now let’s look closer at your LinkedIn profile and how not to overload it with certificates of completion.
LinkedIn Learning and other learning platforms offer many courses on a variety of topics, from Business to Photography. That’s great. However, that can also be daunting when showing off completion of career related courses on your LinkedIn profile under Licenses & certifications section. If you complete a couple of courses, no big deal. However, if you complete dozens of courses, the certificates of completion will dominate your LinkedIn profile. This can diminish visibility of certificates of accomplishment, such as your CSWE, and important career enhancing licenses.
In the past, LinkedIn allowed you to reorder your certificates. You were able to place the most important certificates at the top of the the Licenses & certifications section. Unfortunately, due to revamping of the LinkedIn profile user-interface some time ago, this ability was removed. The current interface imposes a date-based list within Licenses & certifications section.
Flood of Certificates
How does one mitigate the flood of career related certificates of completion without dominating your LinkedIn profile? You could be very selective as to which certifications you include. You could also start your own website where you list all of your certificates, with a link from your LinkedIn profile. However, if you really want to show your training results directly on your profile, there’s another couple of options that may work for you.
Learning Paths
On LinkedIn Learning, Learning Paths are groups of courses that are combined for a particular topic-specific training goal. When you complete the Learning Path, you get a special single certificate of completion for the entire training path.
However, if you cannot find a learning path for your role or training goals, you can create your own, with a catch.
Leverage LinkedIn Learning Collections
LinkedIn Learning allows you to create Collections for your personal use. A Collection folder allows you group saved courses. For example, you can create a collection called “Business Leadership”. Then, peruse the library of LinkedIn Learning in the Business category and add 5 to 10 closely related courses about leadership in business into your Business Leadership collection.
Once you build your collection, it’s time to complete your courses. As you complete each course, you will earn a Certificate of Completion. However, do not download individual certificates of completion right away. Wait until you complete the whole collection. LinkedIn Learning has a bad habit of redesigning their certificates frequently. If you take 12 months to complete your collection, the style of certificate could change. To avoid this issue, download your certificates at one time when you’ve completed the last course in your collection.
Add your Collection to your Profile
Once you’ve completed all of the courses in your collection, use a desktop computer with Adobe Acrobat Pro or other other application that allows you to edit PDF files.
Download the individual certificates for all of the courses into a special location on your harddrive.
Upload this combined PDF to your Google Drive or similar cloud storage (where you can allow public access to the file).
Now you are ready to add your combine certificates to your LinkedIn profile’s Licenses & certifications section.
While you are logged into your LinkedIn profile, goto your Licenses & certifications section.
If it doesn’t exist yet, you can add it using the Add Profile Section button near the top of your profile page.
Use the + button in the section to add your new entry.
Create a title in the Name field that briefly summarizes the collection, then include a keyword from each of the certificates, like “Business Leadership: Speaking, Confident Communication, Collaboration, Gaining buying from other Managers, Negotiations, Leading by Example” There is a limit on the number of characters within the Name field, so be as brief as possible. You may wish to add up the total time of all the courses and include that at the end of the Name field as well, like “[8hrs 25mins]”.
In the Issuing Organization, enter the name of the organization that issued the certificates, like LinkedIn Learning.
In the Issue Date fields, add the month and year of the most recently completed certificate.
Ignore Expiration Date fields.
In the Credential ID field, add the credential number from your most recently completed certificate.
In the Credential Link URL field, add the URL for your combined PDF.
Save
Now review your entry from the LinkedIn profile page to make sure it matches your desired intent. Check the link to your certifications PDF to make sure it works. Below is an image example from my own profile. If you click on the image, it will take you to my combined certificates PDF.
Rinse and repeat for any other collections you wish to complete and show.
Now, if you are on a learning platform that has courses that are longer than one week (40 hours) or have graded exams, you may wish to consider putting such courses in the Education and Courses sections of your LinkedIn profile.
Some people use their LinkedIn profile as a full replacement for an actual resume. For many others, it’s little more than a simple job history timeline. Still others may use their LinkedIn profile as a complete C.V. What’s the difference?
Some people use their LinkedIn profile as a full replacement for an actual resume. For many others, it’s little more than a simple job history timeline. Still others may use their LinkedIn profile as a complete C.V. I use my LinkedIn profile somewhere between resume and C.V.
People of certain backgrounds, countries and generations may not fully understand the difference between a resume or C.V.; or may not even recognize one term or the other. Recently, I’ve heard “CV” used instead of resume. There are a variety of viewpoints regarding C.V. and resume, including regionality and interchangeability of the terms.
Resume
Resume is a relatively short list of one’s employment and education history, with very brief summaries of skills, contact information, achievements and other information. Job descriptions for each role listed on a resume can be as short as one sentence. However, descriptions are often longer; covering as many details as possible while still focusing on brevity. These descriptions tend to focus more on general responsibilities rather than details about each and every individual achievement. Resumes are typically 1 to 4 pages long, with final length being based more on the number of jobs one has held rather than specific details about any particular role. Employment history in the form of a resume is common in North America.
C.V.
C.V. (or Curriculum Vitae) is a relatively long version of one’s employment history. It’s a comprehensive document that summarizes a person’s educational, professional, and personal background. C.V. typically includes the following information in detail: contact information, educational background, professional experience, skills and abilities, awards and honors, publications, personal interests and other relevant information. Basically, a C.V. is more detailed than a resume. Employment history in the form of C.V. is common in Western Europe, though such C.V.s aren’t necessarily as long as suggested here.
LinkedIn
To someone who has a LinkedIn profile page, the common information found on a C.V. might look familiar. LinkedIn profile has sections for the user to input their employment history, licenses and certifications, projects, education courses and history, recommendations, volunteer experience, publications, patents, honors and awards, test scores, languages, organization memberships and supported causes. Due to all these categories, one may end up putting their full C.V. into their LinkedIn profile.
That said, it’s easy to put so much information in one’s LinkedIn profile that information-overload can occur. An upcoming article will cover how to reduce some of that noise without drastically compromising the amount of information. I’ve covered LinkedIn in the past, and will likely also make an updated version of that article in the future.
Normally, members of the Product Definition team at DS SolidWorks Corp give two presentations at each SOLIDWORKS World. Presentations can be either Hands-on or Breakout. Hands-on sessions involve attendee participation at desktop computers provided for the conference. Attendees typically follow and repeat steps shown by the presenter. Breakout sessions are essentially talks with demonstrations of functionality in SOLIDWORKS products.
Sometimes our team gives extra presentations. There are cases where our hands-on sessions are very popular, so we add an extra hands-on session of the same material for the overflow. Other times, we give the multiple breakout sessions on various topics.
My Presentations
At SOLIDWORKS World 2017, I gave three presentations and a panel discussion. It almost never fails that I give a presentation right after the General Session on Monday of the conference. This year, my Monday presentation was a hands-on session about new functionality that’s been added to SOLIDWORKS over the past 5 years. The session was Streamline Drawing Creation with Newer SOLIDWORKS Drawing Tools. In this session, attendees got to try out newer drawing tools that they may have missed before, such as
User Interface improvements
Drawing Zones, Location Label and Automatic Border tool
All uppercase setting for notes
Angle Dimension enhancements
Model Break View
Balloon improvements and more
If you’d like to check out this session’s materials, please feel free to download:
On Tuesday, I gave two breakout sessions. The first one was planned and well-prepared about MBD called Model-Based Definition using SOLIDWORKS MBD. This session covered very general overview of MBD, ways to implement settings in SOLIDWORKS for the best MBD experience, SOLIDWORKS MBD tools (3D Views, 3D PDF Publisher, etc), and DimXpert. A lot of people attended this session. Though, I didn’t pack the house to the wall.
The Powerpoint for this session is downloadable here (SOLIDWORKS files not included):
The second Tuesday breakout session, I presented on BOM’s, called Building SOLIDWORKS BOMs. Due to a cancellation by the original speaker, I had to step to not only cover the empty slot in the schedule, but also talk about BOMs without a prepared Powerpoint slide deck or file set. Since there were no materials for me to work from, I had to skip the Tuesday General Session to give myself time to pull together a session plan and file set. Given the circumstances, I believe I did well. I was able to cover many basics about BOMs, and also more advanced capabilities.
BOM table display options
BOM Type (Top Level, Parts Only and Indented)
Options for displaying configurations of the same part
Keep Missing Item settings
BOM Anchor
BOM Template
Virtual Parts
Document Properties
Sorting
etc.
Unfortunately, because the session was off-the-cuff, there is no Powerpoint outline to provide. The session was recorded, so it should be available as a video while the SOLIDWORKS Proceedings are available (soon).
On Wednesday, I was part of the panel discussion about MBD. Five speakers participated in an engagement with attendees who are interested in MBD. This session was called SOLIDWORKS World 2017 MBD Learning Path Panel Discussion. Attendees asked about many MBD related topics, including STEP, real world implications, specific use cases, vendor adoption, etc.
SOLIDWORKS World 2015 isn’t just for Phoenix, AZ. It’s really for the World! The General Sessions of SOLIDWORKS World 2015 will be live streamed this year. Even if you aren’t able to make it to Arizona next week, you can be a part of the action via the live streaming. As you know, the keynote speakers for each day were announced earlier this year. General Sessions are 8:30 to 10AM each day (local Arizona time).
SOLIDWORKS World 2015 isn’t just for Phoenix, AZ. It’s really for the World! The