Ottawa is the capital of Canada. The city's very first inhabitants were the Algonquin Indians who called the Ottawa River the "Kichesippi" - the Great River. French fur traders named the Ottawa River after the Outaouais tribe who, in fact, only inhabited the area for only some ten years. The city's hallmark - the 200-kilometre Rideau Canal - was designed to establish a link by waterway between Montreal and Kingston (then Canada's capital) via Ottawa (then called Bytown), which was a thriving forest town.

Ottawa. The Parliament Hills.

In the middle of the 20-th century the Government established a "greenbelt" around Ottawa to avoid uncontrolled urban sprawl as well as provide future parks and public open space. The Greenbelt, which the famous architect Jacques Gréber called "the Capital's emerald necklace", forms a semi-circular belt of about 17,600 hectares running in a continuous 44.8 kilometres arc on the outer edge of the urban area. Later on the Capital assumed its role as the cultural showcase for the nation. New festivals (Winterlude, the Canadian Tulip Festival) were launched; and new museums and galleries rose throughout the city. The city is situated adjacent to the city of Gatineau of Québec and is almost bilingual, in French and English.
Dazzling and boyaunt and, yet, peaceful and quiet, the city thrives in the center of the Silicon Valley North - the name that came after the birth of tech giants such as Nortel, JDS Uniphase, Mitel and Newbridge (now a part of Alcatel). In the late 80's the area saw an enormous growth due, mainly, to developments in such high-tech areas as telecommunications, computer programming, wireless telecommunications, semiconductors and chip-design. That growth, however, was not entirely unexpected. The city is the home of such world renowned scientific centres as the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) and Communication Research Centre (CRC). NRC Canada is known world-wide for its pioneering research in spectroscopy, semiconductors, optoelectronics, photonics, etc. CRC, famous for its research in telecommunications, has recently been in the spot-light after invention of fiber Bragg Gratings. Additionally, the city's several educational centres provide an aboundant pool of young talent. Among these institutions are the University of Ottawa, Carleton University, Université du Québec en Outaouais and Algonquin College. These conditions have stimulated the growth which accelerated in the late 90's. Deservingly, the Ottawa valley area has been more and more referred to as Silicon Valley North. A number of start-up companies was created and leading telecommunication companies from Europe and the USA came in to establish their presence in the city.

The audience is preparing for LEOS/OPRA/ NRC/CRC/OPC workshop. April 16, 2004.

These conditions have proved to be the fertile ground for the activities of IEEE Ottawa Section which celebrated its 60-th anniversary this year. IEEE-LEOS Ottawa Chapter has emerged as an important part of the Section and local community. The Chapter began its history in 1989, and in the time since its birth it has won the Most Innovative Chapter of the Year Award three times for such initiatives as an annual student paper competition, innovative web-site, and real audio multicasting of Ottawa LEOS lectures. In the early days, a large part of the activities were made possibile due to efforts of Dr. Jacek Chrostowski and Dr. Simon Boothroyd. Later on, Dr. John Bernard, currently our Treasurer, Dr. Kexing Liu, and Dr. John Alcock , all past-Chairmen, have contributed to maintain the activity at a high level.

At IEEE-LEOS Technical Meeting on "Photonics Nanostructures". From left to right: Dr. Maike Miller (OPRA, second left) is followed by Dr. Kexing Liu (LEOS-Ottawa), Dr. John Alcock (LEOS-Ottawa), Dr. Susumu Noda (Distinguished LEOS Lecturer), Dr. John Bernard (LEOS-Ottawa) together with the guests, May 28, 2004.

In this article we would like to share with you some of our experiences and success stories. Recently, we have organized a number of large workshops that have been noticed far beyond the engineering community both locally and internationally. The key to our success was the development of strategic partnerships with local governmental, industrial and academic organizations. Our collaboration with NRC has existed from the very beginning; NRC's managers have always valued the high profile of the LEOS Distinguished Lecturers and has been helpful in providing resources. In recent times, Dr. John Alcock, the past-Chairman, began establishing partnerships with local organizations. The goal was to organize joint meetings or workshops that would include more presenters, diversify the subject of presentations, help communications and interconnections between the industry, academia and government and, ultimately, increase the interest and draw larger audiences to our meetings. The first successful partnership was established with NCIT (National Capital Institute Telecommunitcations) and OPRA (Ottawa Photonics Research Alliance), which is directed by Dr. Maike Miller. She has come into the collaboration with the slogan "Interaction is the Catalyst of Innovation". Dr. Andrei (Andre) Skirtach, then Vice-Chairman and currently Chairman of IEEE-LEOS Ottawa Chapter has continued this initiative. He has maintained the existing strategic partnerships with NRC, OPRA, CRC and initiated new links with such organizations as OPC (Ottawa Photonics Cluster), ABC (Advanced Biophotonics Consortium) and Vitesse Canada. Our collaborations have blossomed ever since and enabled us to organize a number of large and successful workshops - with the LEOS distinguished lecturers carrying out the key-note presentations. This is a win-win situation, for everybody, particularly for our members. At each workshop, these presentations were complemented by presentations from several researchers/engineers from the local community on the following subjects: optical network technologies, microphotonics, photonic crystals, sensors, and biophotonics. In addition, one of our workshops included talks about planning future developments in the optical networking community. Workshops allow us to conduct more profound discussions and also provide extensive networking opportunities. Another interesting practice that is possible to carry out at workshops is a round-table discussion. We have had several events followed by a round-table discussion. The feedback was particularly positive. In addition, the Distinguished Lecturers liked to participate in such events. The pictures presented in this report have been taken at two recent workshops: "The Emerging Trends in Next Generation Services" with two LEOS Distinguished Lecturers: Dr. G. Eden and Dr. J. David (both are in the picture above left), and "Photonic Nanostructures", the keynote speaker was Dr. S. Noda (in the picture on the next page). We have also helped to organize the first ever Biophotonics Primer - a meeting that brought engineers together with internationally renowned experts in medicine, biology, and biomedical engineering. It was aimed at opening up possibilities of applying engineering technologies to diagnostics, treatments, investigation and monitoring. It was pronounced a big success. At our meetings or workshops we always try to arrange for some refreshments and sometimes cater some food. This brings to our meetings / workshops more determination and at the same time allows for more networking - needless to say, it also brings more attendees to the meetings. The collaborative partnerships allow us to offset the costs of these services and we are able to operate with minimal subsidies. These initiations are particularly important during the current slowdown in the telecommunication industry. The slowdown has hit our area very hard and such efforts, together with hard work in IEEE Ottawa Sections' Engineers-in-Transition program, have helped us to look into the future.
Long ago the Ottawa-LEOS executives thought organizing, at least occasionally, some larger meetings. The hurdles with financing these events, inviting a sufficiently large number of presenters and making it interesting for the participants had to be overcome. Currently we organize such meetings routinely and we are proud of this accomplishment.
The IEEE Ottawa Section is devoting increasing attention to pre-college students and college level students in the area. This year, the IEEE Ottawa Section has organized the 2-nd "Robotics Competition - La Compétition de Robotique " for local pre-college students. Established last year, with the active support from Ottawa LEOS, the competition has doubled in the number of participants this year and the level of work presented by the students has increased significantly. We are planning to support this, now annual, event in the future.
We have made significant efforts through e-mail and our web-page (http://www.ewh. ieee.org/r7/ottawa/leos/) to inform our members of our activities, of information from LEOS headquarters and of opportunities for networking. We acknowledge the close collaboration between the Montreal (Dr. P. Noutsious), Toronto (Dr. E. Estrate) and Ottawa LEOS Chapters in arranging the distinguished lecturers' visits. We would also like to thank the distinguished lecturers for the high level of their presentations and the flexibility of their schedules.
Andrei (Andre) Skirtach (e-mail: ASkirtach@ieee.org), the Chairman of the IEEE-LEOS Ottawa Chapter, is grateful, particularly during his leave at Max-Planck Institute in Germany, for continuing support in organizing the meetings from all the Executive Officers of LEOS Ottawa: Dr. John Alcock, Dr. John Bernard, Dr. Kexing Liu, Dr. Mike Davies, Dr. Simon Boothroyd, IEEE Ottawa Section and, of course, to our strategic partners OPRA, NRC, NCIT, CRC, OPC, ABC. We would like also to thank Dr. Maike Miller, Dr. Richard Normandin, Dr. Marie d'Iorio, Dr. John Grefford, Dr. Alex Vukovic, Dr. Bob Kuley for making our efforts a success. Last, but not least, we thank our members who have shown interest in our events and activities, have been proposed and contributed to the presentations, participated in the meetings and, as we have heard, have appreciated our efforts.