ROCKY MOUNTAIN SECTION OPTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA
                              &
           IEEE LASERS AND ELECTROOPTICS SOCIETY


                 Holiday Party and Meeting

Date:  Tuesday, 17 Dec. 1998
Time:  6:30-7:30 appetizers/light dinner fare and cocktails
       7:30 PM speaker
Place: Damon Room
       NCAR
       1850 Table Mesa Dr
       Boulder, CO


Where is Optics - and the OSA - Going?

       Professor Tony Siegman
       OSA President



Abstract:

The field of optics, the character of an individual career in optics, and the 
roles and challenges for professional societies in serving optics workers, are 
all changing rapidly, in some ways for the good, in some ways that are not so 
good.  A Joint Task Force of OSA and SPIE, after half a year of intensive work 
and collaboration, has just issued a report to the Boards and memberships of the 
two Societies proposing a challenging and stimulating response to these changes 
and to the opportunities they bring.  I'd like to tell you about that report and 
what I see as the challenges for you and for OSA in the coming year, and learn 
from you in return how you see view these challenges and opportunities.



Biography:

Anthony Siegman is tapering down from a 42-year career as Professor of 
Electrical Engineering by courtesy of Applied Physics at Stanford University, 
and is halfway into a stormy four-year tenure in the "presidential chain" of the 
Optical Society of America.  In the first half of this career he was elected to 
the National Academies of Engineering and of Science, received the OSA's R. W. 
Wood Prize and Frederick Ives Medal and the IEEE LEOS Quantum Electronics Award, 
and became known as the author of the world's heaviest Lasers text.  In the 
second half he hopes to guide the OSA membership to some successful decisions 
regarding the future of the Society and of their own professional affiliations.