1. Introduction

The “First European Conference on Optical Fibre Communication” (ECOC), was held in London, 16-18 September 1975, organized by the Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE) and European Physical Society (EPS).

This 1st ECOC was held not even 10 years after Dr. Kao had presented at a meeting, also in London and organized by the IEE, a proposal for long-distance communication over single-mode fibers [1,2], setting the starting point of the optical communication development, or rather: revolution.

ECOC has accompanied this optical communication development over all the years and has become over the last 36 years one of the two premier conferences which covers year after year the progress and frontiers of optical communication. Optical communication has enabled the internet which has dramatically changed our life and globalized our civilization.

ECOC has put this technology also to its own use. In 1988, ECOC was held again in the UK (Brighton) and the IEE pioneered dissemination by publishing for the first time the proceeding of a major conference on an electronic library (IEEE). Since 2008 printed ECOC proceedings are not distributed at all. ECOC 2011 marks another publication milestone. For the first time selected proceeding papers are published in an ECOC/Optics Express Special Issue, making use of dissemination through a high impact factor and open access journal.

The 37th European Conference on Optical Communication and Exhibition [3] took place in Geneva, Switzerland from September 18 to September 22, 2011. ECOC is Europe’s leading event for presenting scientific results, new developments and major innovations related to optical communications and took place at the Palexpo Conference and Exhibition center. ECOC 2011 provided an interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary forum that brought together more than 5000 people (1300 delegates and close to 4000 visitors) together from basic research, R&D, industry and telecom operators. More than 230 oral and 120 poster presentations were carefully selected by the ECOC Technical Program Committee from over 750 submissions. Five plenaries, six tutorials, forty-four invited papers, all by renowned experts, 18 workshops (with 120 papers), 6 symposia (with 49 papers) focused on top actual topics, and 23 post-deadline papers reporting last-hour breakthroughs completed the technical program. These papers are published in the ECOC 2011 proceedings [4]. Altogether, 684 people presented at ECOC 2011 scientific conference.

It is little known that light guiding by total internal reflection was first demonstrated and published in “Comptes rendues”, in Geneva, Switzerland by Jean-Daniel Colladon [5], around 30 years before the famous demonstration by Tyndall in 1870 in London. At the ECOC 2011in Geneva we celebrated the 170th anniversary of this first demonstration of light guiding by Jean-Daniel Colladon in Geneva by four public lectures on “Milestones in Light Guiding”.

ECOC conferences are held every year in a different European city and organized by a completely new team, with only a very small handover, skillfully overseen and guided by the senior EMC (European Management Committee) and IAC (International Advisory Committee). It is a testimony to the diversity, unity and activity of the European scientific community that ECOC has become one of the most prestigious and premier conferences on optical communication. The ECOC technical program is put together by a program chair, six senior subcommittee chairs and a prestigious technical program committee with 98 distinguished experts in their fields from across the world. The topics of the six subcommittees are:

This Special Issue would not have been possible without the generous and enthusiastic efforts of the six distinguished subcommittee chairs, who also served as Optics Express guest co-editors, pictured in Fig. 1 .

 

Fig. 1 The organizers of ECOC 2011 are pictured here: (a) Christoph Harder, (b) Hans Limberger, (c) Juerg Leuthold, (d) Antonio Teixeira, (e) Christoph Peucheret, (f) Dimitra Simeonidou, (g) Gabriella Cincotti.

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We would also like to thank the 125 reviewers, listed below, who dedicated their valuable time to review the manuscripts of this first ECOC/Optics Express Special Issue. This issue was made possible only through their dedicated efforts.

Ursula Keller did suggest that this conflict can be resolved with an ECOC/Optics Express Special issue. Articles in such a special issue can have quite some overlap with the proceedings. In addition, articles in such a special issue can incorporate feedback obtained during the conference, can be made longer and are reviewed much more carefully. Of course this Special Issue has to be published quickly after the conference. We did decide to publish this special issue 3 months after the conference; it gives the authors and reviewers enough time and it is, considered the size of the task, as rapid as possible.

In an opinion survey during the conference we did find that a vast majority of the delegates welcomed this opportunity. This did manifest itself also in that a high percentage (40%) of the eligible proceeding articles decided to submit to this special issue. It is our privilege to introduce you to this first ECOC/Optics Express Special Issue and we do hope that this will be the beginning of a new area for ECOC to disseminate their results.

It has been a pleasure for me to work with this outstanding team on this 2011 ECOC/Optics Express Special Issue and I would like to express my sincere gratitude towards all of them.

Christoph Harder (HPP, Switzerland)Program Chair 37th ECOC 2011Geneva, Switzerland