Posted by Christina Folz, OPN managing editor 

This note represents the first entry to The Optics & Photonics News blog. Initially, we plan to use this blog as a way to post news and comments that supplement our articles or summarize relevant conferences attended by OPN staff, advisors or contributors. However, I’d like to encourage you—OPN’s readers—to help us make this tool whatever you’d like it to be.

Please post your comments or send me an e-mail at opn@osa.org if you’re interested in becoming a contributor or have ideas about what should be included here. Have you attended an interesting topical meeting or observed a really cool optical phenomenon? Why not blog about it?

If you read our first few posts, you’ll learn about Pat Daukantas’ journey to Mauna Kea Summit in Hawaii to visit four large ground-based telescopes. Or check out the entry from Joe Shaw of Montana State University, OSA Fellow and longstanding member of OPN’s editorial advisory committee. Joe discusses the highlights of the 9^th annual meeting on Light and Color in Nature, which he recently hosted at Montana State University in Bozeman.

I also wrote a post sharing my notes from the Council for Engineering and Scientific and Engineering meeting in Halifax, Nova Scotia, about recent trends in open access publishing, vertical searching and journal citation factors. Finally, I was inspired by watching the 2007 U.S. Open tennis tournament to write about the optical technology that has led to a new officiating system for the sport.

Don’t forget to check back with the OPN blog in a week or so. Our goal is provide weekly updates. So check in soon for new posts, including coverage from Frontiers in Optics, OSA’s annual meeting in San Jose, Calif., from Sep. 16-20.

2007-09 September, Miscellaneous Optics, OSA social media, social networking, blogging, publishing, fio