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Illuminating discussions about LED lighting

By Matthew Hidderley and Eve Gaut, Aston Science Park

After a well deserved sleep (it seems be getting hotter every day over here) we were up at the crack of dawn again to join in the breakfast sponsored by Dow Corning - again greeted by many bleary eyes. The breakfast was an excellent opportunity to network with conference delegates, who are usually inaccessible throughout the day due to attending and giving presentations.

This morning’s conference line-up was very appealing, including topics such as recent developments in luminaire design and powering LEDs for mainstream illumination. Industry speakers included Kevin Dowling, Vice President of Innovation for Philips Solid State Lighting/Color Kinetics and Steven Parker, President at Lightech Electronics.

Following a rather intense yet informative morning in the conference, we made our way to the outside luncheon, this time sponsored by Seoul Semiconductor. We had the pleasure of sitting with Aristides Wade, General Manager of Seoul Semiconductor, who stimulated some great discussion amongst the rest of the table about when, rather than if, LEDs will move into the general lighting market. The truth is that only time will tell, but our discussions had timescales ranging from 2 to 5 years, so keep watching!

Following lunch, we took the opportunity to catch up with a few more exhibitors, before everything was broken down and packed away. Tim Bushnell from Oxley Developments has accepted our invitation to attend the Photonics Cluster (UK) Breakfast and Photonics Strategy Launch taking place at Photonex08 on 15th October. We also spoke with Mark McClear, Director of Business Development, Cree.

All in all we made many new and exciting contacts today, and after a hard days graft the only way to relax is a night out on the town. So with goodbyes to all of our friends at LEDs 2008, we made our way to the Old Town district of San Diego for dinner.

In tomorrow’s blog, we will be introducing the LED Measurement and Standards 2008 event, also taking place at the Sheraton Hotel on the Marina, San Diego, for two days.

Posted by Jacqueline Hewett on October 2, 2008 10:11 AM | Permalink