by Paul Drzaic
President, Society for Information Display

This will be my final President's Corner column in Information Display. I am nearing the end of my term as SID President and it will soon be time to pass the torch to new leadership. Before moving on, though, I'll use this opportunity to take a look at the Society for Information Display, review how the Society has evolved over the past few years, and provide a preview for some new and exciting changes that should enhance the value of SID into the future.

SID's traditional strength has been its technical symposium, which continues to be the most prestigious worldwide venue for display engineers to unveil and explain new technologies. We're not sitting still, though – we've taken several steps in our conference organization to ensure that SID is even more responsive in identifying hot new areas of technology, and delivering this content to our audience. Besides our typical coverage of topics such as liquid-crystal displays, OLED displays, and active-matrix backplanes, we have new areas of emphasis such as 3-D displays, touch interfaces, electronic paper, flexible technologies, green manufacturing, and solid-state lighting. With papers reviewed and selected by our worldwide network of volunteer experts, the SID Symposium will continue to serve as the top venue for discussion of advanced electronic-display technologies.

While this function of SID is stronger than ever, we've also recognized that the sheer size of the electronic-display industry means that economic and market factors play just as much of a role in deciding what technologies get developed as inventors' activities in the lab. The SID Business Conference, organized in collaboration with electronics market research firm DisplaySearch and the Investors Conference, in collaboration with securities and investment banking firm Cowen and Company, continue to make available critical analysis and business insight across multiple areas of the display enterprise. New for Display Week in Seattle are a series of Market Focus Conferences, organized in collaboration with electronics market research firm IMS Research. These one- and two-day conferences will take deep dives into the areas of television, touch interfaces, and lighting, providing an intensive look into the market development of these important application areas.

SID publications continue to evolve in ways designed to meet the needs of SID members and the outside world. Information Displaycontinues to cover important areas of technology, but is strengthening its application-oriented content as well. We want SID to be a good home for those who use and deploy displays, as much as it is for the engineers who invent them. ID's new application focus will broaden the content useful to the applications community, an important constituency for SID.

We certainly are not neglecting our technology base, though, and the Journal of the SID and the SID-Wiley book series continue to excel in publishing the leading papers and books on display technology. We are in the midst of a process to fully integrate JSID into the world of research journals, and our participation in indices such as Thomson's Web of Science and Scitopia will continue to drive the prestige of publication in our journal across multiple disciplines with a tie to electronic displays. The SID-Wiley book series is now 16 titles strong, with a wide range of topical coverage on display topics that really can't be found anywhere else. SID is proud to be able to provide these publications as a service to the greater world.

We have a number of other initiatives under way: new services and content available to SID members through our Web site; membership campaigns planned for Japan, Korea, and China; closer cooperation with sister display societies; and support for strengthening our chapter-level activities. All of these efforts, and more, are aimed at promoting the interests of our members, the companies, laboratories, and universities they work for, and the electronic-display industry as a whole. There are more reasons than ever for people who are interested in electronic displays to join SID. It's been my honor and privilege to do my part in helping SID expand its capabilities during my time as President. Of course, there are large numbers of volunteers and sponsors who provide the true lifeblood of SID, and through their efforts, the Society is able to provide the high-quality information and services that it does. My heartfelt thanks go out to all volunteers and sponsors.

The next SID President will be Munisamy Anandan, and he'll be writing the next President's Corner to appear in Information Display. Anand is a display-industry consultant with particular expertise in display lighting and has been playing important roles within SID for over 10 years. Please join me in wishing him good luck and in pledging your support for SID's next chapter. •