It’s official: registrations are now closed for the DVN Tokyo workshop. We will have 130 attendees from 40 companies, about the same size crowd as at Michigan this past January.
I think the main reason for the great interest and robust participation is that the lighting community wants and seeks to share information to help define strategy and cope with the enormously increased workload attendant with today’s rapid increase in automotive lighting technology. These new technologies, such as LEDs and smart lighting systems, need a lot of engineering, research, development, manufacturing, and marketing resources—all on an ever-shorter time scale. The intelligence and peer feedback presented and circulated at the DVN workshops can prevent a costly trip down the wrong developmental road.
I am preparing a lecture for an event at the end of the month pondering this question of how to explain the great interest in DVN workshop participation. I think the big challenge of the next months and years will be how to tackle the great increase in workload without too much increase in resources. I am convinced we can at least partly solve the problem by three actions:
• a partnership between car makers and lighting suppliers;
• a link with universities and research institutes to educate students and develop lighting;
• more DVN periodical news, reports, and workshops, and congresses such as ISAL and VISION collecting and disseminating not just information but real intelligence—not just what to do, but how to do it right.
I know the attendees of the DVN Tokyo workshop will have a fruitful time getting information and intelligence to optimise their work.
Sincerely yours
DVN Editor in Chief