IODC 2021 will take place but in an all-online form. Many of us are disappointed by that, and we will miss the personal interactions that have been a key part of every IODC. We had hoped to meet in person, but many attendees will still be unable to travel, and the venue was converted to a vaccination center and had to cancel the contract.
The online sessions are now set up and there are almost as many contributions as 2017. Sessioning was difficult because we had to take care for subfield, time zone and the joint sessions with the co-located conferences. You may still find that some papers will be given live at inconvenient times, but videos of all of the papers will be quickly available during the conference.
Soon, the acceptance notifications will be sent to authors by OSA including instructions for online presentation.
Working with both SPIE and OSA, we learned that the traditional printed Proceedings volume can no longer be produced. However, OSA is able to post Proceedings papers, keeping the entire set permanently accessible to all conference attendees.
Some IODC attendees have suggested that we postpone this conference to 2022 instead of having an online meeting this year, but it has been decided to go on with this year’s meeting, and to schedule the next IODC to happen as a hybrid meeting (in person and online) in just two years, 2023. This will allow the current papers to be presented, as the authors expected, and it will maintain the co-location with Freeform, Fabrication & Testing and (new) Flat Optics conferences, and continue the great tradition of IODC. There is no decision yet on the location or exact date.
So we will look forward to seeing you at the end of June, and in 2023.
Simon Thibault, Henning Rehn, Peter Clark and Rich Pfisterer