Lightfair turns spotlight on networking, SSL

Lightfair turns spotlight on networking, SSL

Trade shows provide two things that are hard to find — the opportunity to see a broad breadth of related products in one place, and a chance to get to meet others with related interests and share insights and information. Most shows seem to take care of product aspect pretty well, but the networking part is often catch as catch can.

That will not be the case at this year’s Lightfair International, which will take place in Philadelphia, PA, the third week of May, due to the launch of the Spotlight Lounge. With the goal of providing more innovative opportunities for networking and education, the Lounge will be staged directly on the trade show floor.

As part of this launch, on Wednesday afternoon from 3 to 4 p.m. the Lounge will present keynote speaker and iconic lighting designer Ingo Maurer. Maurer will present Addicted to Light — Thank God for Shadows and, following the presentation, will be publicly interviewed by Pilar Viladas, design editor for T: The New York Times Style Magazine. Maurer, whose lighting designs have been included in the permanent collection of The Museum of Modern Art in New York and seen at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York, the Bauhaus Archiv in Berlin, the Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain in Jouy-en-Josas by Paris, and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, exemplifies the successful integration of esthetics and technology that Lightfair promotes.

Renowned lighting designer Ingo Maurer will provide his keynote from the show floor’s Spotlight Lounge.

On the Sunday and Monday preceding the opening of the exhibition floor, the gathering offers courses and workshops to foster this integration. From a technical viewpoint, one of the more interesting technical workshops will be SSL: Not As Simple As It Seems – Things to Know and Things to Consider, ” which will be held on Monday. With an emphasis on outdoor LED luminaires, the session will be conducted by David Baum of Philips Roadway Lighting, Rosemont, IL, and Mark McClear of Cree, Durham, NC. Another Monday workshop, High Dynamic Range Imaging for Glare Analysis , explores the HDRI photographic technique, which is growing in popularity because it of its usefulness as a lighting design and evaluation tool.

Seminars will be held on Tuesday through Thursday. Among the technical sessions of note are as follows:

Creating a Vision for OLED Lighting — Moderated by Peter Ngai, this panel brings together DOE SSL Lighting Program Manager James Brodrick, OLED technology expert Paul Burrows, Lighting designer Patricia Glasow, and OLED lighting professional Jeannine Fisher to offer insights on how OLEDs may transform perceptions and practices of lighting.

Is LED the Answer? — In this presentation by Cheryl Ford of OSRAM Sylvania, Danvers, MA, traditional vs. LED lighting options will be examinedhighlighted for a variety of applications, the advantages of one technology over the other will be discussed, and recommendations of where it makes sense to use the various technologies will be made.

Shouldn’t this be easy? Why dimming LEDs currently isn’t, and what’s being done about it — Noting that “anyone who has tried to dim many of the currently commercially available LED products with existing dimming equipment and infrastructure has likely experienced more confusion and frustration than high performance dimming,” Michael Poplawski of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Portland, OR; Ethan Biery of Lutron Electronics, Coopersburg, PA; and Gabe Arnold of Optimal Energy, Bristol, VT, will highlight the technical reasons why problems exist, update the audience on existing activities to address them, and offer advice on how to make tradeoffs.

Richard Comerford

Lightfair International Trade Show & Conference will be held at the Philadelphia Convention Center from May 17th, to 19th , proceeded on May 15th and 16th by educational courses and workshops. For further information, visit www.lightfair.com or e-mail info@lightfair.com.