by Daniel den Engelsen

LatinDisplay 2009, the premier Society for Information Display conference in the Southern Hemisphere, took place in São Paulo, Brazil, on November 16–19, 2009. The venue for the third annual event was the Perdizes campus of the Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo (PUC-SP), where the organizers held a symposium with oral presentations, a poster session, and an exhibition run in parallel to the conference. The Display Escola (Display School), a special program for those who wanted to learn more about displays, took place on November 19 at another campus of PUC, having about 35 people in attendance.

LatinDisplay 2009 had approximately 280 participants over the 3 days – a record for this conference. LatinDisplay has definitely come of age as a member of the family of SID conferences. There are several reasons behind this growing popularity. First, LatinDisplay has a unique conference formula; it is basically a one-track conference with no parallel sessions, featuring oral presentations by famous display experts from all over the world. Second, the speakers are carefully selected and instructed to present topics in a way that will be of interest to a broad audience of attendees, including students, company managers, university professors, bankers, and government authorities, as well as experts from display-related institutes and industries.

The highlighted areas at LatinDisplay 2009 were OLEDs, e-Readers, and displays for medical applications. Apart from a gripping lecture by Dr. Manju Rajeswaran, Senior Scientist at Kodak, on the analysis of OLED materials, the focus on OLEDs was on lighting applications. Dr. Gopalan Rajeswaran, Vice President of Moser Baer, reviewed recent developments in organic solid-state lighting and Dr. Tom Munters, Product Manager at Philips Lighting for OLED-based lighting, described Philips's activities in this field.

Ken Werner, Senior Analyst at Insight Media, described the developments in the field of e-paper, notably e-Readers. The avalanche of products now on the market demonstrates that e-paper technology is maturing.

The third highlight was a presentation from Dr. Adi Abileah, Chief Scientist at Planar Systems, on displays for medical applications. His presentation was also the perfect introduction for a subsequent panel discussion on displays and information systems for healthcare and hospitals. That discussion featured Ken Werner, John Jacobs of DisplaySearch, Gabriel Marcu of Apple Computers, Adi Abileah, and Cecil Cho of USP in Brazil.

In addition to these highlights, there were many other invited lectures with content that was of interest to specialists as well as a broad audience. The lively Q&A sessions after the presentations showed that audience members were highly engaged. Perhaps LatinDisplay's successful, one-track formula is ready to be copied by other chapters of the SID.

Shown at far right during the opening ceremony of LatinDisplay 2009 is Dr Victor Pellegrini Mammana, chairman of the conference.

Dr. Ernst Lueder of Stuttgart University begins his lecture on high-performance LCDs at LatinDisplay 2009.

It should be noted that a second attractor for LatinDisplay is the current policy of the Brazilian government to attract the display industry to Brazil to counteract a trade deficit of about US$2 billion due to huge panel imports. The policy and financial instruments that are available in Brazil to attract display-related industry were presented by Dr. Margarida Baptista of the Banco Nacional de Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social" (BNDES) and by Dr. Pedro Alem of the Agencia Brasileira de Desenvolvimento Industrial (ABDI).

The poster session during LatinDisplay 2009 (40 posters in total) was a good opportunity for young scientists to show their newest results in supporting technologies for displays, solar cells, and lighting. Awards were given for both the best student and non-student posters.

The exhibition parallel to LatinDisplay 2009 was modest, with only 16 booths. Nevertheless, the central location of the venue supported networking activities between the participants, and for this reason the exhibition was an attractive place to show services and products.

Finally, the hospitality of the Brazilians, especially the hostess of LatinDisplay 2009, Professor Alaide Pellegrini Mammana, amid the warm Brazilian culture, once again provided the finishing touch to a successful LatinDisplay.

Please visit the Web site of LatinDisplay 2009 to learn about forthcoming LatinDisplay conferences athttp://www.brdisplay.com.br/latindisplay. LatinDisplay 2010 has been scheduled for November 16-19. Alaide and Victor Pelligrini Mammana look forward to welcoming you to Brazil for the next and most exciting LatinDisplay yet. •