In This Issue

New Products & Capabilities
Annual Meeting
MCC Optics, the 60's and 70's
Lunch & Learn: Grow sales 30% - 300%
Contracting With the DOD
Collaboration Everywhere!
Conferences

Lunch and Learn

What It Takes to Grow Sales 30% to 300%

This Lunch and Learn Session is Limited to Company CEO's, Presidents, and Vice Presidents of Sales, and will be limited to 12 attendees. There are still 5 seats left.

Tuesday, November 24th
11:30 AM - 1:00PM
Lennox Tech Center
Multi Media Room

In the Optics/Photonics Industry companies are selling complex and leading edge technology solutions to some of the most sophisticated buyers in the world, including the Department of Defense, Defense Primes, Fortune 500 Companies and many other High Technology Industries. One observation is that the sophistication of your Optical, Photonic and Imaging products and services has outpaced your ability to sell them. For some, this may represent the single biggest barrier to growth.

Some industries selling into this same customer segment have successfully leveraged expert level solution selling capabilities that have enabled them to grow at a record pace of 30% - 300% year over year.

The focus of this lunch and learn is to discuss the steps in transforming your sales capabilities to win higher and bigger contracts.

Learn more and register by sending an email, or by calling Tom Battley at (585) 329-4029.

MCC Optics... the 60's and 70's

Part two of a memoir from Marty Dvorin

One morning, Ouida Norris, Chair of Biomedical Engineering Technology, stormed into my sixth floor corner office and showed me a newspaper article saying that, because of financial conditions, the College was investigating canceling both of our programs. Now there were two storming people, barging into the office of Leroy Goode, the College President. “Don’t worry, nothing is happening, yet.” Happily, nothing did.

Being a one-man department was exhausting me, so I went to the Faculty office, and requested another person. Charles Ball, then in the Audiovisual Department, had expressed interest. But the assistant was adamant: there was no money for additional staff. I had a prepared letter of resignation in my pocket, which I always kept in my desk in the event I needed it. (I never did). I flashed it. The guy shrank back, like a vampire might from garlic. Then I went back to my office and called Theron Carter at Kodak. “Ted, this is Marty. H-E-L-P!” and hung up the telephone. Somehow, Charlie was transferred to the Optical Technology Department. The Rochester optics industry has always been supportive of the Program.

Budget money did come in, and we bought better lab equipment from Ealing and others. I called the late Alex Martens, a V.P. at B&L, my alma mater. “Alex, I need a spectrometer”. “Marty, I can’t give you a new one. They are expensive. But I’ll lend you a used one.” “When?” “Oh, I can use one in the next few days.” Alex, bless him, had one in a raincoat pocket when he came into our lab. Kodak gave us the first lens polishers. 500 plastic containers came from a former employer in Kearney, New Jersey.

Students were coming in; graduates were getting hired. Bob Novak, having just received his B.S.degree from Arizona University, visited the department. The details are hazy, but somehow Bob joined the department the next semester. Then we were three. And Howie Smith, of course.

1971 was a watershed year for MCC's optics program. To widen the market for our graduates, during summers, my late wife Harriette and I motored to New England. We would camp in our 1969 Dodge Sportsman van at Salisbury Beach Park, Mass., and visit companies around Route 128. I signed many confidentiality agreements and saw a lot of "company secrets." Recruiters came from Lawrence Livermore Labs in California, and hired many of our graduates. With four-year engineering grads having trouble finding jobs, our story was in the newspapers and on local television. When Dennis Gabor won the Nobel Prize for Holography, Howie and I were invited to explain holography on a morning TV program. The Rochester Section of the OSA held meetings and pre-meeting dinners at the MCC campus, and I was invited to be President of the Rochester OSA for the year 1972-1973. In the summer of 1973, Harriette and I drove the van around the USA and visited Colleges and companies to further expand coverage. Around the Los Angeles area, the SPIE housed us and arranged for visits to important installations. The Optics Survey went national.

We applied for a federal grant, and were awarded enough money to add, among other things, a Bridgeport milling machine and a Strasbaugh polisher. We hired other people from industry as adjuncts. With an Education Committee, we set up a transfer program so that graduates from MCC could continue at the Rochester Institute of Technology or the University of Rochester, working towards a B.S., M.S. or a PhD degree. Feature articles describing the optics program were published in Applied Optics and several other international journals.

The Optical Engineering Technology program at Monroe had come of age. If not for that original visit from Frank Milligan, I just might have gone over and applied for the job that was offered to me that day back in 1966.

Marty Dvorin, UR Optics '66
was Chairman of MCC's Optics Program from 1966 - 1976
Dean of MCC Engineering Technologies 1976 - 1978
Marty lives in Marin County, California

Events and Conferences

Grow Sales 30% - 300%
24 November, 11:30 AM - 1:00 PM
Lennox Tech Enterprise Center
150 Lucius Gordon Drive
West Henrietta, NY
Call or email Tom Battley (585) 329-4029

SPIE Photonics West
23 - 28 January, 2010
San Francisco, California, USA

OP TEC Workshop on Optics & Photonics Education
RESCHEDULED for February

SPIE Defense, Security & Sensing
5 - 9 April, 2010
Orlando, Florida, USA

Optatec
15 -18 June, 2010
Frankfurt, Germany

Save The Date

RRPC / New York Photonics Annual Meeting

Tuesday, November 17th
3:30 PM- 7:3o PM
3:00 PM registration
Rochester Museum & Science Center

Thanks to this year's sponsors!

Be sure to check the sponsor list for your suppliers, your bank and your service providers. If their name listed, offer them a special thanks.

Four RRPC Members make the Top 100

The Rochester Top 100, now in its 23rd year, ranks privately held companies based on three most recent years of revenue growth. Companies must have at least $1 million in revenue for each of those years, and rankings take into account both dollar and percentage growth.

It is likely that even more optics companies from the region would make the list if more submitted applications.

Rochester Precision Optics #8
OptiPro # 37
Sydor Instruments #54
Sydor Optics #93

Manufacturers Guide to Doing Business with the Department of Defense

RIT CIMS / U.S. Department of Commerce Offer Joint Event

November 17, 2009

8:30AM - 4:00PM

Hobart & William Smith Colleges

Scandling Center - Vandervort Room

Geneva, NY 14456

Free parking and Wi-Fi on site.

The Basics of DOD Contracting
Making Sense of DOD Acquisitions
Deconstructing the DOD Contracting Process

Presenters:

Brian Duddy, Lieutenant Colonel, USAF-Retired, RIT CIMS Senior Program Manager

Jean Kase, Rochester PTAC Program Director

This event is free. Registration is here.

The brochure is here.

Contact RRPC

How does one acquire the coveted RRPC Newsletter Cub Reporter Badge?

New York Photonics and the Rochester Regional Photonics Cluster are active and growing collaborative organizations. Efforts are under way on joint training events, workforce development, collaborative advertising opportunities, promoting the commercialization of I.P., and the development of our website to further facillitate business development.

Join us! There are advantages to working together, and we are interested in working with you. Send an email to us at membership@rrpc-ny.org.

To subscribe, to unsubscribe, to submit a news item or upcoming event, to suggest a feature or column, or to offer feedback, contact Tom Battley, at 585-329-4029.

New York Photonics and The Rochester Regional Photonics Cluster (RRPC) are not-for-profit organizations founded to promote and enhance the New York State photonics, optics and imaging industry by fostering the cooperation of business, academia and government.