Hi,

I hope all of you enjoyed your holidays in December.  We will be having this month's meeting at the Fish and Richardson conference room.  I will send a complete announcement in a few days.  Please mark your calendar!

Attendees seemed to enjoy both lively discussions before the meeting as well as having the meetings finish early.  As a consequence, I'll encourage our speaker to begin while we are enjoying our meal.  We'll try to hold questions until the end of the talk.

I have made a request previously for suggestions for meeting locations.  After our experience at Giovanni's last month, I would like to find another more reliable location for our meetings.  I conducted a search last year and did not arrive at many solutions.  Please help me by suggesting some alternate meeting sites.  Here are a few options with pro's and con's.

• Restaurant - Most restaurants do not have a private room.  We absolutely need a private room so we can use our projector and hear our speaker without being interrupted by other patrons.  The restaurants I've seen with private rooms charge extra for a special server for our group.  This increases the meal price from our low budget:  $7 - $20 to $25 - 35.  In almost all cases we need a guaranteed minimum number of attendees, otherwise we pay a flat rate (e.g. $400).
• UCSD - Parking fees are $7/night or $1/hr and the campus is difficult to navigate.  Furthermore, I don't know if rooms are for free.  I assume a UCSD faculty member can help us negotiate a free meeting room.
• Hotels - We have used hotels before.  They have the same cost constraints as restaurants:  $25 - $40/person with a minimum required.
• Local Optics Company - I have yet to identify a local optics company with a meeting room that would allow us to us their conference room for our meetings.  This could be a nearly ideal situation for the OSSD:  convenient parking, low cost, allows food, friendly sponsor.  With a couple alternate sites and a point of contact at each we would only need the room 2 - 4 times each year.

Please offer your suggestions.  In particular, I need to know if you are price sensitive.  Our attendance has ranged between 10 - 25 people per meeting.  Candidly it is not predictable based on the RSVP's.   I hesitate to spend OSSD money to fund "empty seats" at a Hotel or Restaurant.  We don't have a source of funds other than fees for dinner.  Without your feedback, I don't think it is fair to charge a membership fee just to pay for meals at a hotel or restaurant. 

Please let me know your opinion so I can help the OSSD serve you.

Best regards,

Brian

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MEETING NOTICE-OPTICAL SOCIETY OF SAN DIEGO

COMPUTER VISION AT UCSD

by Prof. Mohan Trivedi

Thursday, Jan 31,  Fish and Richardson Law Office
Dinner 6:30-7:30, Talk 7:00 - 8:30

Prof. Trivedi received his PhD in Electrical Engineering from Utah State University in 1979, after completing undergraduate work in India. He has published extensively and has edited over a dozen volumes including books, special issues, video presentations, and conference proceedings. Trivedi is a recipient of the Pioneer Award and the Meritorious Service Award from the IEEE Computer Society; and the Distinguished Alumnus Award from Utah State University. He is a Fellow of the International Society for Optical Engineering (SPIE). He is a founding member of the Executive Committee of the UC System-wide Digital Media Innovation Program (DiMI). Trivedi is also Editor-in-Chief of Machine Vision & Applications.

DINNER MEETING LOCATION AND RESERVATIONS

LOCATION: Fish and Richardson Office in Del Mar

MENU: TBD

RESERVATIONS: Please confirm your attendance to 
Brian Catanzaro at: opticalsocietyofsan diego@yahoo. com by
the end of the day Wednesday, Jan 30.

LOCATION DETAILS

Fish & Richardson P.C.
12390 El Camino Real
San Diego, CA 92130

Main   : (858)678-5070