CompoundSemi Online - The Original Compound Semiconductor Industry Newspaper

February 7, 2007...Every 30 years or so, one simply has to clean out the storage place where one stashes all those archived compound semiconductor (CS) and solid state lighting (SSL) industry publications, conference proceedings, reports, and old correspondence from back when we actually used paper and snail mail. Better we do the sorting ourselves than leave the task to clueless descendants. But when tackling the task, one is faced with the questions: What to keep and what to throw away... and why?

Until this last weekend, my storage area for "industry collectibles" was starting to look like the classic closet in the old radio show, "Fibber McGee and Molly." If you're old enough to remember that show, and if you too have pack rat tendencies, you probably have a closet that looks much like mine did. 17 huge feed sacks later (we ranchers accumulate lots of empty livestock feed sacks) all marked to go to either the appropriate recycle bins in town or to the local landfill, that closet is now suitable to house almost anything. In my case, ranch jackets, seasonal decorations, family memorabilia and the compound semi industry "collectibles" I simply couldn't part with. I can even find office supplies in there now! I know you're not interested in the personal items (if you are, you need to get a life of your own), but I thought you might be interested in what I simply couldn't part with from my 30+ years covering the compounds as a trade press reporter and editor, and the trends I unveiled looking back through the decades.

Lugging the loads of throwaways out of the house and queuing magazines up for recyclers, I was first reminded that the old print trade publications from the last 20 years, most of which emanated from the UK, were tremendously heavy. In physical weight and in content. I swear, British paper, as used for trade magazines, outweighs USA-produced mags by a ton. Slick and glossy, they were all especially hard to throw away, if only because so many lovely trees obviously gave their lives for the cause of the advancing the compounds. I hope the recyclers pay a bit of reverence to them as the pulp gets recycled into... whatever.

After thumbing through them as they went in the sacks--and given I was finally in a throwaway mood-- the only magazine issues I egotistically elected to keep were the remaining existing issues of the original III-V Technology Review magazine, which I myself originated, wrote and published in 1986 and 1987... long before any of the subsequent compound semi-related print publications even existed. It was even easy to throw out all those issues of magazines in which I contributed articles, because I've long gotten over the thrill of seeing my byline. But I couldn't possibly part with my own creations. Not that I'm ever going to read the contents again, but they still show well on a coffee table.

I haven't touched nor looked at those five vintage issues for years. If you weren't playing in compound semi circles in the mid-1980s and never saw them, we selected really sexy covers, each depicting speed (a falcon, a race car, a jet, etc.) honoring GaAs's speed v.s. silicon's. The only writing on the cover, besides the title and year, said... "a quarterly journal covering current views and research updates for the GaAs/III-V based high speed analog, MMIC and digital IC community." (Whew, that was a mouthful!) We obviously had a long way to go to define our industry distinctly and succinctly back in the Original '80s. HB-LEDs and the notion of solid state lighting (SSL) weren't even a glint in our collective eyes back then. And we hadn't yet clicked on the easier handle of compound semiconductors let lone, the simplified, compound semi. The latter term was the stroke of genius of our publisher, Tom Griffiths.

The other generic thing I kept were my master tapes from telephone interviews in the '80s and '90s. Not being a technical person, with the interviewees permission (of course), I taped everything simply so that I'd get the story right. Given the technology of the times, and given I've always been a fast typist, I laboriously transcribed every word you guys said, printed the transcripts out, highlighted the usable quotes and explanations, then wrote my story. As computers improved and email entered the scheme, the amount of paper diminished significantly. Online communication and "cut and paste" (and don't you love that kindergarten term) has totally outmoded taping. One of the things left in the closet is my last desktop computer, before upgrading to a laptop, because it may have something important stored on it.

I also kept every bit of videotape I ever spent on you guys. Scroll down our CompoundSemi Online homepage left hand menu to the part that asks New to the Compounds? to our old videotape 101 workshops. Those were first-class industry video productions, leveraging my earlier career as a business network television producer. Nitride 101 from 1999 was when Shuji Nakamura was in his final year at Nichia. If Shuji ever wins a Nobel, I've got some very key original footage. And the GaN 101 video from 2001 is another classic because it featured some of the great international wide bandgap pioneers. InP 101 would be interesting because it would likely reveal, in retrospect, why InP wasn't destined to be as great as people hoped it would be. Like InP 101 workshop leader (and InP guru) HRL's Joe Jensen pointed out, "I can grow the world's whole supply of InP devices on my one machine." There was actually that little demand for it. I wouldn't be surprised if that's still the case! In any case, I've hung on to a slew of workshop tapes and all the original footage and masters. You never know when The History Channel might call...

Back when we held the original BLUE 2003 event in Dallas, I hauled a bunch of the old magazines and interesting memorabilia to the conference to share with other nostalgia buffs. That was my first clue that nobody really cared much about what happened way back when. Except for the Cree guys getting excited that I still had some old souvenir T-shirts and jackets from events back when Cree had so much money they threw stupendous parties. I kept the apparel, but finally threw out the old dog-eared proceedings and huge binders. Why do we insist on heavy print proceedings? They never fit easily into your luggage. A DVD of the presentations or promise that they'll be available to attendees online within a week makes way more sense. Give the trees a break!

So as I look at my nice clean closet, I say goodbye to quite a few old skeletons. We haven't yet hauled the bags to the landfill, but I doubt I'll shed a tear. It's time to bid the past farewell and move on to the future, which is why organizing CS Vision 2007 is such a joy. One of the most important trends I saw, felt, and believed as I did the closet sort was how all those dreams I had in the 1960s have actually come true. Thanks to the decades of advancement in the semiconductor industry, we're on the verge of finally becoming the paperless society computer and semiconductor pioneers envisioned. The CS and SSL industries are obviously taking the lead in energy and resource conservation. All of who work in or support the CS and SSL industries are helping make incredible strides toward reversing the trend of unmanageable waste and environmental clutter. It's what we preached in the '60s, and then went about offering solid, sensible energy saving solutions, like smaller, smarter systems, solid state lighting and higher efficiency solar cells.

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Skeletons in the Closet
Jo Ann McDonald