I’m back. It’s the end of February, so I must be back in San Jose for SPIE’s annual Advanced Lithography Symposium. I have mentally prepared myself for week of exhausting days standing and speaking and drinking, seeing numerous friends and colleagues, forgetting the names of people I should remember, getting excited by incredibly good papers and disgusted by incredibly bad ones, arguing about the future of various technologies and our industry, thrilling to the discovery of some new opportunity while mourning the loss of another. Each year this conference gives me something new to think about and look forward to for another year, each conference with its own personality and, eventually, its own memories.

First the numbers. Last year attendance was down 60% from 2008 (to about 1000), a dismal but not unexpected result given the economy and the state of the industry. This year it is up 25%, a big improvement but still a long way from its glory days. The most obvious manifestation of this new, smaller reality is the length of the conference – shortened by one day. I wonder how many people booked their plane tickets before realizing that there is nothing to stay for on Friday (like I almost did). Perhaps a more disturbing trend is the make-up rather than the number of people attending. Five years ago more than half the attendees were at this conference for the first time. This year, less than a quarter are newbies. Like me, the conference is getting grayer.

I started off the conference, like every year, by teaching a full-day short course on Sunday. The short courses have definitely suffered with the economy. Compared to four years ago, there are half the number of courses being offered and one fourth the number of course attendees. My course did better than most, with just under 20 students (and that despite the fact that it is more expensive than most, since I force the students to buy my textbook as a part of the course fee!).

The biggest change this year at the AL Symposium is the addition of a new conference – EUV Lithography. Splitting off from its old home in the emerging/alternative lithography conference, EUV is making a bold statement that it is now mainstream – it has emerged. Certainly the number of papers being presented gives credence to this strategy: about 150, more than any other conference at the symposium. Last year I famously predicted that the EUV lithography conference would be resounding success in 2010, before plummeting to zero papers in 2011. So far my prediction is right on target.

[OK, so maybe my prediction is a bit of an exaggeration. It might be 2012 before the number of EUV papers goes to zero.]

As a final note of introduction, as I approach the age of 50 I have become enamored with anniversaries, especially of the round number variety. I gave my first paper (on PROLITH) at this conference 25 years ago. I started FINLE Technologies a few weeks before SPIE 20 years ago (I also had my first bathtub party 20 years ago). And a few weeks before SPIE 10 years ago I sold FINLE to KLA-Tencor. I can’t help but notice that by the end of this week PROLITH will have been a part of KLA-Tencor for longer than it was a part of FINLE Technologies. Time moves forward, things change, life is different. I’m glad for that.