Last Thursday, I found myself in Bellingham, Washington. Of course, no one goes to Bellingham – I just happened to be driving from Seattle to Vancouver, British Columbia (to attend a philosophy of science conference – I know, I have strange hobbies). Besides being a little bit hungry, I had no reason to stop and wouldn’t have given the exit from the highway another thought until I was struck by a nagging familiarity with the name of the town. Bellingham. Then it occurred to me – this was the home of SPIE, the optics professional society that hosts the two largest conferences in the semiconductor lithography world (BACUS, the former home of world-class geek entertainment, and Microlithography, now dubbed Advanced Lithography so that no one will think we are doing any of that mundane kind of microlithography we used to give papers on).

Bellingham, Washington. The place we Fed-ex our extremely overdue manuscripts in the hopes that they might still be included in the proceedings. The return address on the advanced program that we get in the mail every year telling us about the few papers we will go see and the many, many papers we will miss at the massive Microlithography (sorry, Advanced Lithography) symposium. The place where we assume real people sit and talk to us on the phone when call with a question, but of course we are never sure.

SPIE Headquarters. I don’t know anybody whose has ever been there. So I decided to go. I veered off the highway at the last minute, searched and finally found the very well hidden building that was nestled in the hills and trees of this small coastal Washington town. I asked for the people I know there – June Thompson, who used to manage the BACUS conference, and Brian Thomas, who spear-headed the effort to upsize Micro into Advanced. Luckily, they were both in town. June gave me a tour of the building (it’s very nice!), then indulged one of my (mostly) harmless obsessions and took me to a brewpub for lunch (I can say with confidence – there’s good beer to be found in Bellingham). I exchanged gossip with Brian (though, quite frankly, lithography gossip is pretty boring) and lent him a sympathetic ear as he complained about the problems running SPIE’s most successful conference. All in all, a nice time.

So if you find yourself driving up interstate 5 through Washington some day with a little time on your hands, stop by and say high to the folks at SPIE. They’re nice people, and they get lonely.