The next couple months represent my favorite time of year. The weather is usually wonderful, and the back-to-school energy hangs in the air, even for those of us far removed from school.
I remember some first days of school well, complete with the obligatory, informal portraits my mother hurriedly took before the bus arrived. I’m sure some of you have them, too. Every year brought the promise of expanded knowledge and new social experiences — what we’d call “networking” today.
I grew up in a small community and attended public school from kindergarten through twelfth grade so I was never a “new kid” in school. Still, I’ve had my share of first-day anticipation. I experience it even now when I attend industry events, and when our team launched the first LightSPEC West event last fall. I imagine many people who have launched an event have had a similar feeling — like attending the first day of school in a new location, full of promise and unknowns, such as how will it all go, who we will meet, and so on. There are a few such “new kids” to acknowledge on the lighting and controls industry event calendar.
At press time, representatives of the Lighting Research Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the optical society SPIE are welcoming attendees to San Diego for a new addition to the SPIE Optics+Photonics conference: a 3D Printing for Lighting event to be held Aug. 22–23. Back when we first covered the 3D printing announcement, I inwardly bemoaned my inability to attend and hear the compelling research on the agenda. I look forward to hearing from the organizers how it all went.
The fall calendar has two more newcomers, both focused on lighting controls technology. On Sept. 26–27, the DesignLights Consortium will host “Unlocking the Potential of Networked Lighting Controls” in Detroit. The panels and discussions aim to engage DLC members, utility program personnel, and decarbonization advocates in overcoming barriers to implementing networked lighting controls to the benefit of building owners, managers, and occupants. And our old friends at the Illuminating Engineering Society New York City section (IESNYC) and Designers Lighting Forum of New York (DLFNY) — known for organizing the annual LEDucation conference and exhibition — will debut NYControlled in the Big Apple on Nov. 14. The one-day event will feature tech talks and networking opportunities on the exhibit floor at the Metropolitan Pavilion NYC.
And finally, our editorial team itself has a newcomer: Hayden Beeson has joined LEDs Magazine and Architectural SSL as associate editor. Hayden hails from Tulsa, Okla., and has worked as a freelancer and in editorial operations at industrial-machine lubrication media and training provider Noria Corp. On behalf of our LED and solid-state lighting community, welcome!
CARRIE MEADOWS is editor-in-chief of LEDs Magazine, with 20-plus years’ experience in business-to-business publishing across technology markets including solid-state technology manufacturing, fiberoptic communications, machine vision, lasers and photonics, and LEDs and lighting.
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