Time is flying, and again another year has (almost) passedby. A first year post-covid ?! At least what we have seen and experienced are again in-person meetings and conferences. My very first in-person gathering since 26 months was the Image Sensors Europe conference in London. It was such a pleasure to see that many “old” colleagues again. Also the Harvest Imaging Forum could take place as an in-person event (although I added the option to attend on-line as well).
So the year 2022 could be seen as the year in which we tried to move again back to the old “normal”. But at the moment that we were looking forward to that, the world was hit by a new crisis in Ukraine with the energy crisis as a result. First marketing reports indicate that the successive world-level threats have also their negative influence on the image sensor business. But the same marketing people also predict a re-growth of market in the second half of 2022. Let’s cross our fingers.
If I look back to the year 2022 in relation to Harvest Imaging, then first of all I am more than happy to share the news that 50 years ago Uncle Neil released his album, called “Harvest”. The tille of that album inspired me to use the name of “Harvest Imaging” to my own little business. Harvest Imaging enjoyed its 15th birthday in 2022, and it is pretty sure that Harvest Imaging will never reach a 50th anniversary. But for the moment still the same business aspects are being addressed by Harvest Imaging :
- training and teaching : most of the courses are now on-line, because (due to Covid ?) also USA and FE discovered the possibilities to get tailored trainings and courses delivered by Harvest Imaging. In contradiction to foregoing years, the majority of training days were booked by overseas customers and no longer by EU customers. Looking to 2023, all trends in the training business of Haarvest Imaging will continue : partly back to in-class courses, the majority still will be on-line, mainly for overseas customers,
- consulting : most of the working time in 2022 was devoted to training and teaching, not that much time was left for consulting. I am sorry that I had to disappoint some customers when they were asking for consulting work. One of the issues of running a service business is the fact that you can sell your hours only once,
- technical projects : in the year 2022 I finished my evaluations on angular dependency of the (parastic) light sensivitity of an existing global shutter image sensor. The results were presented at the Image Sensors Europe conference and published in the special issue on Solid-State Image Sensors of the IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices. The material presented and published can be found on the webpages of Harvest Imaging. It remains a lot of fun to do all the experimental stuff myself, and still learn from it. I can advice this to every (solid-state imaging) engineer,
- Harvest Imaging Forum : due to Covid the 2021 edition of the Forum had to be postponed to 2022. But after a very slow start of the registrations, finally the forum could take place as a hybrid event. The comments from the participants was very positive, so also in 2023 the Forum will be combine on-site and on-line attendance. Information about the 2023 version of the Forum can be found on the webpages of Harvest Imaging.
Isn’t there nothing that will change in 2023 ? For sure there is : mid May 2023 my contract at the Delft University of Technology will come to an end and I ask my manager to no longer extend the contract. My last MSc student got his degree in November 2022, and my last PhD will finish his project in September 2023. In this way my academic career will come to an end in 2023. If I look back to my 22 years of part-time professorship (0.2 fte) at the Delft University of Technology, I “delivered” 16 MSc students and 13 PhD students. Most of them are still working in the field of electronic imaging.
Close to the end of 2022, it is a pleasure for me to wish all my customers and readers a great Christmas period and a Happy and Healthy 2023.
Albert.