The year 2025 has a nice, round ring to it.  I like round numbers, and it is especially true for me this year as I attend another SPIE conference on lithography.  That is because the first paper I ever presented at a conference was exactly 40 years ago, at the 1985 SPIE Microlithography Conferences held at the Mariott Hotel in Santa Clara, California.  That year the conferences were Electron-Beam, X-Ray, and Ion-Beam Techniques for Submicrometer Lithographies IV (27 papers), Optical Microlithography IV (33 papers), and Advances in Resist Technology and Processing II (44 papers), held 11-14 March, 1985.  That was the tenth SPIE Microlithography conference, the first one being in 1976.  My paper was called “PROLITH: A Comprehensive Optical Lithography Model”, and for anyone interested in such ancient history, the paper can be found here.  I remember very clearly that I remember nothing about giving that paper.  I was so nervous (but also had practiced so often) that giving the paper almost didn’t register in my consciousness.  But give it I did, and my career took off. 

It has been a fun 40 years! As I wander around the San Jose area on Sunday afternoon, I am already running into friends that I see only once a year, at this event, and others that I see all the time.  I’m reminded of how important this community has been to me, and not just from a business or professional perspective.  I don’t buy into the phrase “It’s only business.”  It’s never only business – everything is personal.  And that’s because, when I get to the bottom of what I do and why I do it, it’s always about people.  People I am very close to, people I see only once a year, and people I have never met.  They are all important, and they give me the sense that what I do matters.  That’s why I love being a part of this community, and why I keep coming back every year for 40 years.  What we do matters, and that matters to me.

And so conference number 41 begins for me.  Some things will be just like years past – a plenary session, new SPIE fellows, too many marketing talks and graphs without numbers on the axes, trying to stay awake through some talks and being so excited by others that I can’t wait to talk about them and think about them.  And some things will be unique – the new young person I meet that gives me hope for the future, the inspiring idea that I take back home and try to make use of, and the inevitable, incremental, interesting new progress that makes life and this career of mine interesting.  Let the conference begin!