You're probably tired of hearing about APEX 2002, its sparse attendance, and how the show is looking more and more like a NEPCON West rerun. Granted that attendance was not as large as what exhibitors wanted. Still, many told me that visitor quality was good. Moreover, many visitors said that their companies had money to spend! Despite the recession, the buzz I heard on the floor leads me to believe that optoelectronics will be the industry's next driving force. Optoelectronic packaging is still in its infancy. While it's a promising area, volume is still light, and costs are relatively steep. Moreover, standards and assembly automation are lacking. But like many of its predecessor technologies, these hurdles will be overcome and opto packaging will deliver products and processes to be reckoned with soon. Beginning with the January-February issue, we expanded our editorial focus by adding expert coverage of opto packaging. Terry Thompson, our editor-at-large, will keep you on the cutting edge of this technology with his columns and articles. On a different note, people are asking me, "What's happening to the publishing business? Why are magazines becoming so thin?" The answer is a simple matter of economics. You receive Chip Scale Review-and competitive publications-gratis in the U.S., courtesy of our advertisers. The money they spend pays for editorial, paper, presswork, mailing, editorial salaries-and more. As a matter of good business practice, most magazines maintain an advertising to editorial ratio around 50/50. During good times, some publishers will move to 60 percent advertising with 40 percent editorial. We have never exceeded the 50/50 mark, believing that in the long run, it is false economy to sacrifice editorial quality and depth simply to accommodate more advertising. Like the revenue of most of our advertisers in today's economic crunch, magazine revenues have fallen off dramatically. At best, shrinking ad dollars mean reduced page counts. I'm happy to report, however, that we are holding our own. Our editorial calendar-the topic roadmap we develop each year for our advertisers and article contributors-was completed before September 11. Our expectations were that the industry recession had bottomed out and that recovery would take place no later than this January. Well, you know what happened. The world as we know it was turned topsy-turvy on September 11, and everyone's best-laid plans took a backseat to the new reality. In closing, I ask you to keep the faith. We will survive. And together we will be stronger than ever before. 
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