PIC Summit 2024: how was it?

I visited the PIC Summit in Eindhoven last Wednesday October 16th. The event has grown from a humble meeting 3 years ago to a very respectable international meeting hosting top speakers from top notch companies like NVIDIA, Sony, Global Foundries and the likes. The event attracted this year over 700 attendees, which makes that they have almost outgrown the location at which the event was hosted: the Evoluon in Eindhoven. That's of course a good thing, but also a little bit a sad thing. I really like the Evoluon, it's special. It's easy to reach, it has good facilities, a beautiful location, a special architecture and noteworthy an interesting history (it used to be a Philips Science Museum). So, I would be sad to see the PIC Summit leave the Evoluon in the future, but maybe it has to if it wants to keep growing.

In addition to the keynotes, there were panel sessions, a poster session, a small exhibition and plenty of networking opportunities. There was the next day a roadmap event that I did unfortunately not attend but l'd love to see the output from it. I especially liked the networking opportunities, I was able to talk to a multitude of people active in packaging (a topic close to me). Packaging is an important topic for the semicon industry but especially so for the integrated photonics industry. Packaging often surmounts to 90-95% of the total device costs. If photonics really wants to fulfill its promise of becoming the next "semiconductor industry" with high-volume and low-cost solutions, it needs to address packaging. See also one of my other posts on this topic ((1) Rolling out new LCP air-cavity package technology for Photonic Integrated Circuits (PICs) | LinkedIn)

There are a few opportunities for improvements I would say, or maybe I should call them "growth" opportunities. I think it would be worthwhile to consider to give the topic of education more focus. Access to a good work force is increasingly difficult and every sizeable subsidy project in NL and Europe has nowadays a human capital agenda. And so should an event like the PIC Summit I think. Universities and trade schools are increasingly taking their responsibilities to educate more and better resources for the semicon/photonics industry, but I think industry should be more involved and also take their responsibility. Public-private partnership can lead to a better, more focused and more sustainable output from schools and universities. And I mention in particular also "schools". We don't just need PhDs and MSc's and BSc's. We also need technicians!

And secondly, I think it would be good to try and upgrade the poster session to a full conference event with (more) international attendance. In this way you create a balance between keynotes and panel sessions (opinions) versus science (facts). I say that because I think that "opinions alone" will eventually not become sustainable for an event like this. If you heard them one year, for sure the next year will not be significantly different. By upgrading to a full conference, you could bring the event to the stature of an "Integrated Photonics Europe" event, becoming recognized as the most important event in Europe. And thus making it worthwhile to visit every year!

Well, that gives the organization something to strive for I think. I'm looking forward to see if they manage to raise the bare even further next year.

What do you think? Let me know in the replies...

Marco Koelink @ Koelink Consultancy