For the third year of our optical communications technology recognition program, we invited technology developers to submit products for review by our independent panel of judges in time for OFC. In some cases, that brought entries for products that will be introduced at this year’s show.
Our Award Program Manager, Ed Cornejo, assigned each entry to be reviewed by three judges knowledgeable in the relevant technology or application. They rated each entry on the following scale:
0-1: Useful product, yet commodity
2-3: Solid product with viable attributes that set it apart
3-4: Excellent product with technical features and performance that provide clear and substantial benefits
4-5: Superb product that sets new standard for performance and provides groundbreaking and new technical milestones.
Our panel included:
- Robert Blum, director, strategic marketing and business development, Intel Corp.
- Brandon Collings, CTO, Optical Communications, CCOP, JDSU
- Frank Effenberger, Huawei Fellow, Vice President Access R&D department, Network product line, Futurewei Technologies
- Jim Hayes, president, The Fiber Optic Association
- Conard Holton, editor in chief/associate publisher, Laser Focus World
- Daryl Inniss, director of new business development, OFS
- Vladimir Kozlov, founder and CEO, LightCounting
- Patrick McLaughlin, editor in chief, Cabling Installation & Maintenance
- Jim Theodoras, senior director of technical marketing, ADVA Optical Networking
- Matt Traverso, TMG engineering, Cisco
- Dr. Tiejun J. (TJ) Xia, Distinguished Member of Technical Staff, Verizon
We congratulate this year’s participants for being brave enough to submit their products for review. As you’ll see, the results indicate that innovation continues to be found across the fiber-optic communications landscape.
