SEMICON West '08: Intersolar Adds to Hectic Schedule

SEMICON West, one of our busiest
shows of the year, just keeps getting busier. We used to have five
days to cover everything — Monday through Wednesday up in San
Francisco covering the front end, heading down to San Jose
Wednesday night to finish out the week in the back end. And those
were the days before Semiconductor International took over the show
daily, and before SEMI started up its TechXPOT programs. Now we
have just three days to get and write all the news we can for the
show’s printed Daily News, our own ongoing online news and
daily NewsBreak newsletters — not to mention the usual bit of
face time with the sources that help us out so much throughout the
year.

(I know. You’ve taken out your
violins, haven’t you? I don’t mean to sound like
I’m whining. In fact, SEMICON West has gotten to be one of
the most exciting times of the year, taking me back to the
thrilling days of newspaper reporting.)

Enter Intersolar North America.

SEMI has tried various tactics to
get visitors over to Moscone West since it opened about five years
ago (my gosh, has it been that long?), including beer halls and
Segway tryouts. No offense intended to the packaging suppliers
who’ve been stuck over there, but the place has stayed pretty
dead. Last year, SEMI put a few photovoltaics-related keynotes in
the West Hall, and the place got packed. So teaming up with a solar
show to help bring the crowds that way seems like a decent
idea.

I’ll certainly be spending
more of my time this year over in the West Hall than I have in
years past — meeting with exhibitors at Intersolar, as well
as some photovoltaics-related SEMICON West exhibitors (and a few
packaging folks as well) — but I’m still limiting most
of my time there to a single morning (after all, there are still
only three days, and we still have other news to write). I plan to
check out a couple Intersolar conference presentations, including a

Global CSP Market Forecast on Monday afternoon and a
Market Technology Outlook session on Wednesday afternoon as
well. All conference programs, by the way, are at the new
InterContinental hotel, adjacent to Moscone West on Howard
Street.

But there is a lot at Intersolar
that I won’t be spending my time on. In putting together our
roundup of the Intersolar show for Tuesday’s SEMICON West
Daily News, it struck me, actually, how much of the show is not
really up our alley. There are the full conference tracks on solar
thermal technology, for example, and exhibits for companies that
are further down the manufacturing line than we generally cover
— the installation aspects that are more akin to the board
assembly that we also don’t cover in the semiconductor
industry.

At Semiconductor International,
we’ve been covering our particular niche within the
photovoltaics industry for several years — primarily through
our LexisNexis feed, with occasional staff-written news. In fact,
you can check out all the latest coverage at any time on our
Photovoltaics
Channel. Our July issue, which you can pick up in our booth
(Booth 1513, South Hall) at SEMICON West, features photovoltaics
even more prominently, including a cover story on thin-film
PV; an article from Synopsys on applying TCAD
to solar cells; Coherent’s explanation on the use of
lasers to
support the solar roadmap; an Expert
Perspective from Rhone Resch, president of the Solar Energy
Industries Association; and a web-exclusive feature from EV Group
about cross-industry
innovation between MEMS and PV.

It will be interesting, actually, to
see how well Intersolar North America fits into the SEMICON West
scene. There are some concerns from SEMI members, from what I hear,
but perhaps the jury’s still out. Let me know what you think
of the whole plan, and if you find yourself over there during this
year’s show, report back to us here to let us know how it
went.