From June 25th till June 28th 2009, the International Image Sensor Workshop 2009 took place in Bergen, Norway (see also www.imagesensors.org). I had the honor to be the General Chair of this event. Since the first workshop in 1986, organized by Eric Fossum, the workshop has considerably grown, and its organization can no longer be done by a single person. I was lucky to get assistance from Chantal Castelijns (DALSA), the secretary of the workshop, and Johannes Solhusvik (Aptina), the technical program chair.
Within the imaging community, the workshop is recognized as the world’s most important gathering of technical image-sensor people. Can you imagine : without any technical program available and without indicating the exact location of the workshop, the workshop was completely sold out only 3 days after the start of the registration. This clearly demonstrates the importance of the workshop. About 2/3 of the participants attended already an earlier workshop, about 1/3 of the participants attended for the first time. Remarkably was the high number of European participants and the low number of attendees coming from North America. This clearly was a result of the economic downturn.
During the workshop I got many times the following questions :
– Why limiting the number of participants to 140 people ? The reason to limit the audience has to do with the more open atmosphere that can be created amongst a smaller group of people, to stimulate the discussion during the technical meetings as well as the informal contacts during the breaks,
– Why using a hotel in the middle-of-nowhere ? Basically for the same reason, trying to keep the group together, also in the evening hours when it is time for social networking,
– Why going to an expensive country such as Norway ? Because the days are so long in Norway (especially around June 21st). From previous workshops it was learned that the technical program during the day was quite heavy. So we thought of making it easier to absorb by extending the length of the days 😉
The workshop tried to bring innovation in its own product as well : for that reason the workshop was extended with an extra day, actually an extra opening day was added and assigned to a “hot imaging technology”. What kind of imaging subject these days is hot ? We thought that the hottest technology at this moment is Back-Side Illumination (BSI). Although the technology by itself is not new, BSI for CMOS consumer devices is. About one year ago the very first announcements of BSI-modules were made, and since then everyone is eagerly looking forward to see images of these technical miracles.
The workshop organization invited 7 world-experts in the field of BSI to give each a presentation of 1 hour. In this way an outstanding and appealing program was put together. The extra BSI opening day was extremely well received by the participants. Although it is not yet decided, it looks more than logical to continue with this initiative of opening the workshop with an extra day devoted to one specific subject.
Looking forward to IISW2011 when Nobukazu Teranishi is going to host the workshop,
Albert 2009-07-14
So we thought of making it easier to absorb by extending the length of the days
Well, it is a very good idea. I did appreciate, indeed, the sunbath after each long day of work.
To Albert Theuwissen: be careful not being too much proud of yourself Albert…