OFC/NFOEC 2013
March 17 – March 21, 2013
Anaheim, CA,
Anaheim Convention Center
Attendees: 12,000 (est.)
Exhibitors: 550+
Media and Analysts: 100
Calysto Overview
The OFC/NFOEC event, or Optical Fiber Communication Conference and Exposition/National Fiber Optic Engineers Conference, is a long-running show (more than 30 years) for both the technology and business of optical communications — telecommunications, optical networking, fiber optics, datacom, and computing.
With attendance topping 12,000 for the past several years, this show reflects the growth of the optical communications industry itself. Managed by the Optical Society (OSA) and co-sponsored by OSA, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers/Communications Society (IEEE/ComSoc), and the IEEE Photonics Society, last summer this event was named one of the United States’ top 25 fastest-growing trade shows in net square footage growth by Trade Show News Network (TSNN).
Among the hot topics in technical sessions for 2013 were software-defined networks (SDN), silicon photonics, 100G/400G network design, cloud and data center networking. Within the theaters on the show floor topics such as cloud services, silicon photonics, SDN and photonic start-ups, Metro 100G, packet optical convergence and optics in the data center were all presented.
The keynote speakers this year were Caio Bonilha, president and CEO of Telebras, Brazil’s federally-owned telecommunications service provider; Nick McKeown, Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Stanford University; and Brian Protiva, CEO, ADVA Optical Networking, Germany. The session presentations were given by executives from Verizon, Juniper, Google, Sprint, Microsoft, Cisco, Corning, the Ethernet Alliance, Optical Internetworking Forum, and others.
A popular session of the OFC/NFOEC is the rump session, where there are no scheduled speakers and audience members can raise their hand to signal they want two minutes at the microphone. This year’s session touched on whether silicon photonics will unlock a new future for optical chips, or whether hype has outpaced the technology.
As for the exhibition floor, of the more than 550 exhibiting companies, 45 percent were based outside the U.S. This is one of the places to be for the optical communications ecosystem. Product categories included communications network equipment; routers; electronic components; fiber optic cable processing; fiber manufacturing equipment; fiber splicers and switches; lasers; laboratory and test equipment; network test equipment; optical equipment, product test equipment, video and imaging systems, wireless communications; and others. ADTRAN, ADVA Optical Networking, Alcatel-Lucent, Ciena, Cisco, Clearfield, Corning, Google, Huawei, Juniper Networks, Nokia Siemens, and others all were represented.
OFC/NFOEC didn’t generate a slew of media coverage, but Light Reading and Gazettabyte covered sessions and announcements extensively, as did Ovum analysts in their blogs. And, communication-savvy companies who had speaking opportunities leveraged that content in their own blogs.
New this year for social media coverage, OFC/NFOEC tweets were visible on the OFC/NFOEC home page and a Twitter board featured a live feed of all tweets with the #ofcnfoec hashtag in the convention center lobby. Tweets were also fed live across information screens throughout the center. Organizers reported there were nearly 1,000 tweets about OFC/NFOEC during the five days of the event, March 17-21. There are more than 900 followers of the OFC/NFOEC Twitter feed and 2,047 members on the OFC/NFOEC LinkedIn Group.
Overall, the OFC/NFOEC show is one of the important and targeted events for the optical fiber communication market, with good opportunities for lead generation, speaking opportunities and leveraging content to connect with this market. (If you’d like to learn more about how to do this, contact Kristine Bennett at Calysto.)
Next: OFC/NFOEC 2014 will be at San Francisco’s Moscone Convention Center, March 9-13, 2014.
Articles of Interest
Ovum @ OFC/NFOEC 2013
Light Reading @ OFC/NFOEC 2013
Gazettabyte @ OFC/NFOEC 2013
Silicon photonics to take center stage at optical event
EE Times
By Rick Merritt
March 18, 2013