SID's DisplayWeek, the industry's leading trade show, is taking place in less than two months. The OLED-Info team will attend this event, and my good friend Sriram Peruvemba, SID's marketing chief, was kind enough to discuss the upcoming event with us.
Hello Sri, thanks for your time with this interview. SID's DisplayWeek has always been the world's leading display trade show. What can you tell us about the upcoming 2018 edition?
Ron - yes SID Display Week is the the world’s leading display trade show, but Display Week is so much more than a trade show. It is the world’s leading technical learning, sourcing and buying event focused on emerging electronic display technologies, their advancement, commercialization, and growth.
We are very encouraged this year by registrations coming in from across the globe for SID’s technical Symposium, Business track, and Exhibition. We are seeing registrations from next-generation display creators, value-add providers and iconic market-leading end-users we all know, as well as business executives, analysts, academia and many students looking to get into our industry.
In fact, we are seeing the entire electronic display value chain from R&D, engineering, design and supply chain. Also many OEMs and ODMs. If you need to source suppliers, or create a road map to commercialization, you can make all the connections for your professional and business growth right here face-to-face at Display Week May 20-25 in Los Angeles.
We have awesome Keynote speakers - Dr Deqiang Zhang, CEO of Visionox, Dr. Douglas Lanman, Director at Oculus/Facebook and Dr Hiroshi Amano, Nobel Laureate.
The Technical Symposium comprises of Short Courses on Sunday, 15 Seminars on Monday, 333 Symposium Talks from Tuesday thru Friday and 213 SID Poster Sessions on Thursday.
The business tracks which is organized jointly with Display Supply Chain Consultants (DSCC), offers 4 conferences Business, Automotive, Investor and Immersive Experience. Each of these feature prominent leaders from the industry, the investor conference is quite different this year, the speakers feature those that are looking to invest- VCs, hedge fund managers, private equity as well as start up companies with promising technologies looking for investment.
In the exhibition hall we will have more than 250 companies, the show floor has expanded compared to last year, we expect to see AR/VR devices, automotive displays, Wearables, Quantum Dot based products, flexible OLEDs, reflective displays, touch screens and lots of new materials. The Product Showcase gives you a quick glimpse into what you can expect on the show floor. The I-Zone will feature emerging technologies from a variety of startups and universities from around the world. We will also have an Exhibitors forum where the exhibitors will outline the key aspects of their technologies and what they are showcasing.
In addition, the popular Women in Technology returns this year with 5 prominent women leaders who will share their experiences; for the first time ever we will have Student Job Fair supported by local universities as well as industry hiring managers. The CEO Lessons Learned forum is new to DisplayWeek, this year, the forum features 5 industry leaders, CEO’s and Board Members with vast and diverse experiences who will share their stories and their aspirations for the future.
Finally, we are celebrating the 50th anniversary of LCD technology by having a special event that features 9 scientists and technologists that each helped shape this industry, has over $100b in sales and created over a million jobs.
DW is a great place to experience new display technologies. What kind of new technologies do you expect to see this year?
I am hoping to see displays never before seen, displays that will come to market 2-3 years from now, progress in existing display technologies, tiny VR displays to massive signage displays, technologies ranging from LCD, QD, OLED, TFEL, ePaper, deployed in transmissive, passive, reflective, projected modes, everything will be at the show, if you are a display enthusiast, you will have a great time.
OLEDs are taking over large parts of the display market. Will this be reflected at DW?
Yes of course, we expect to see latest versions of small factor OLED products used in industrial, medical, consumer products including wearable devices, mobile phones and tablets; we also expect to see large area TV and signage products with OLED, flexible OLED products are always a great draw at DW.
The I-ZONE is always an interesting part of the exhibition what do you expect this year?
The I-Zone is always a magnet for the visitors since everyone wants to see emerging technologies, we have received a record number of entries and the I-Zone committee headed by Mr Harit Doshi is screening them and final selection will be made in the next few days. Due to its popularity, we will split the I-Zone into two sections so that it is easier for the attendees to navigate thru all the exhibits.
You have been part of SID for many years. How do you see the current and future changes of the display market?
I have been involved with SID for over two decades, I love this industry. I find it fascinating that technologies like TFEL that was pioneered by Dr Chris King and the late Jim Hurd are so resilient, despite so much pressure on LCD, that technology still leads the industry. And there is no shortage of new technologies, I see great progress in various aspects of ePaper, OLED, QD and MicroLED technologies. Each of these target different applications so we will see not only competition between technologies for applications like TV and Mobile Phones but these will create new applications that aren’t quite main stream, eSchoolBooks for example. And there are even more technologies in labs and universities that show promise.
SID’s DisplayWeek is a comprehensive event - with an exhibition, conferences, symposiums, poster sessions, workshops and more. What are your own plans for the conference?
Its probably the busiest week in the year for me. I typically start the weekend prior with board meeting, marketing updates, getting together with my counterparts from around the world, during the week, its non stop activity from about 7am all the way until midnight, I look forward to various sessions, particularly the keynote address, the LCD anniversary event etc. This year the Women in Technology event is expected to be awesome. I will kick off the press conference on Tuesday morning to give the attending press and analysts an overview of what to expect, will also moderate the first ever CEO forum on Wednesday, will be involved with various aspects of marketing the event. Each night I would try and attend 4-5 dinners (I don’t eat 4 times) to catch up with friends from around the world that I sometimes only see once a year.
Walking the show floor to meet some of our exhibitors, to see their newest offerings is always fun, we have LG, Samsung, AUO, Corning, Merck, BOE, Tianma, E Ink, 3M, JDI, Visionox, Silvaco among the 250, and I try to see all the exhibits if possible though it is not easy given time constraints. Most importantly, I get to meet industry colleagues, assist job seekers and catch up with friends from all over.
What kind of technologies are exciting you these days?
I get excited by all display technologies since I have worked on most of them during my career but this year, I think the interest is higher in MicroLED, Quantum Dots, Reflective Displays, Flexible Displays and some new materials.
Thanks Sri! I hope this year's DW will indeed live up to our expectations!
