OFC + NFOEC

Last fall, after a particularly quiet National Fiber Optics Engineers Conference in Orlando (exhibitors and registrants were both down 60% from the year before), Telephony echoed the call of those sparse attendees for NFOEC to merge with its bigger, older brother, the Optical Fiber Communication conference. OFC recently adopted the suggestion, buying NFOEC from its owner, Telcordia. NFOEC attendees will be spared the dreary prospect of an even smaller, slower show this fall, as it has been cancelled in favor of a combined annual show starting in Anaheim, Calif., in March 2005. The new event will be called OFC/NFOEC, a name that retains brands but looks like a chemical compound or a license plate. Event organizers should be lauded for adapting to the needs of customers (both attendees and exhibitors), who will now get the best of both worlds while saving travel (and exhibit) expenses. And the rationalization of these two shows may comfort longtime attendees who remember the events' more academic roots, which were somewhat trod over when the telecom bubble turned these technical engineering conferences into noisy trade shows. Also, trade press will benefit from OFC's press rooms, which were always better stocked with food and phones than NFOEC's (though that had no bearing on our original request for the merger — honest).