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Got back from 5 days at the International System Dynamics Conference Thursday evening. It was good to be there and demo the work I have been doing, but also exhausting.
The last day we ran a couple of workshops for teachers and new users. I love doing those because it’s great to see people get so excited about the potential of the software and what they can do with it. Sadly they will become frustrated later as they hit some limitations.
This is why it’s so important for us at isee systems to lead the way in defining and implementing a normal standard for representing system dynamics models. This will empower modelers to move from application to application depending on their needs. I talked with so many customers who used iThink/STELLA for communication/presentation of models and Vensim for deep analysis of models.
There was a Information Science Special Interest Group meeting during the conference where we talked about the standard. It was clear that two other SD software vendors are interested in supporting the standard. The other major vendor seems to think it’s not a high priority. Maybe if isee systems and the other two companies implement the standard then users will provide the pressure needed to raise the priority.
I really think this is the way to create an even better ecosystem of customers. We at isee are focused on sharing understanding gained by the modeling process. Our software is excellent for teaching children and adults alike who have not been exposed to ST/SD. Vensim has more technical capability, (I would call these power-user features), that are applicable in research and very large models. You can do more, but the learning curve is steeper. Instead of Vensim trying to add better presentation/sharing features and isee trying to add more techie features it seems more efficient to let customers move from one to the other seamlessly.
Think HTML and using a simple text editor or Dreamweaver to modify it. An mp3 files that can be played on iTunes, Winamp, Windows Media Player or my car CD player.
