Hi. I am the Marketing Communications Manager at Maplesoft. This is the first piece of writing where you get to know who I am, but many of you have probably already read a lot of what I’ve written. I am responsible for the promotion of Maplesoft products. It’s my job to take what the really smart Maplesoft employees create and turn it into something engaging (and typically say all I need to say in 3 paragraphs or less, or in the case of subject lines, 49 characters or less). Within every piece of highly technical math-filled piece of writing is a gem of a story waiting to be brought out. I try (sometimes successfully, I hope) to bring out these stories. Every time you’ve read our newsletter “The Maple Reporter,” an email, or a letter from Maplesoft, you’ve read my work. My goal is for people to read what I write and say “I want that!” or “how do I do that?”

Jim, my boss, was a bit worried when I told him I wanted to do a blog post. He thought I might be too promotional in my writing, because that’s how I write every day. He said “The Maplesoft blogs are meant to spark discussions and give an inside view of our company. They are not meant for simply advertising or promotion.” And, of course, I deferred to his higher judgment and promised - no promotion. Anyway, I had different reasons for wanting to write this post.

At this point I think I should clarify. Contrary to popular opinion, I am not a spin doctor, although many people call marketers like me by that nickname. I believe what I say about our products. Why? Because every day I review user stories, blog posts, applications, webinars and whitepapers that demonstrate (in my humble opinion) truly amazing things that people are doing with Maple and MapleSim. Space station arms, boats pulled by parachutes, animated water, recapturing aroma in single pod coffee makers (seriously!), 3D models of Yoda, biomechanical modeling of human motion in prosthetics research, safer seatbelts, safer nuclear power plants! The list goes on and on.

I am constantly in awe of what our customers accomplish. Not many marketers can really say that. But not many marketers get to write about the kinds of things that I get to write about. Every day at Maplesoft there is something new that amazes me. Like a webinar we did recently with the IEEE where Dr. Richard Gran discussed the evolution of multi-domain modeling. During that webinar, I was literally glued to my headset. Dr. Gran helped create the Apollo lunar module that ended up being the means by which stranded astronauts were saved! But more than that, with experience spanning 5 decades, he is the embodiment of how far humans have come in our exploration of what math and computers are capable of (there is a recording of this webinar – you can listen to it here).

I am not a mathematician or an engineer. I have an English degree. The way I understand Maplesoft reminds me of a time when I was a teenager showing my little brother my homework. He stared at me in wide-eyed amazement, clearly thinking that I was the most brilliant person alive (and I was very happy to let him believe it). I want people to be as amazed as I am by what has been accomplished with the help of math software. With my writing, I try to instill the same wonderment in others that I feel when I learn about how Maple is helping researchers analyze bone growth, or how MapleSim is helping automotive engineers create advanced vehicle systems that can be modeled in real-time.

Nobody requested that I write this blog post. I wrote it because I wanted to. I was reviewing the blog posts of others with the purpose of putting them into our newsletter, when I found myself so impressed by what I was reading that I felt compelled to write a post of my own. I hope that you read this and choose to learn more about the products (and the people) that are helping to create more efficient vehicles, improve vehicle safety, make advancements in science, and create better smelling coffee makers - buy now! (Okay, I had to get a little promotion in here, didn’t I? Jim, I had my fingers crossed!)