BALTIMORE, Mar. 7 -- OFC continued today at the Baltimore Convention Center. This year's conference has drawn a record-breaking number of participants, with over 12,000 attendees registered to date and almost 480 exhibitors filling approximately 300,000 square feet in the exhibit halls. The New Product Awards for 2000 were announced this morning; the winners were CIENA Corp., SDL Inc., Lucent Technologies, GN Nettest, Corning Inc., CoreTek Inc., and Xros Inc.
   The Tutorial Sessions for OFC 2000 commenced today as well. This year's topics include the following: chromatic dispersion compensation and measurement; optical networking standards; understanding the spectral response of fiber gratings; PMD in optical transmission systems; technology alternatives for 10Gb/s LANs; WDM sources; and optical-layer networking: opportunities for and progress in lightwave micromachines.
   This year's plenary talks, held this morning, focused on "the changing face of telecom." George Gilder, a senior fellow at Seattle's Discovery Institute, spoke on the future of telecommunications and the impact of emerging technologies. Vinod Khosla of venture capital firm Kleiner Perksins Caulfield and Byers in Menlo Park, Calif., discussed the ways in which startups are changing the telecommunications industry. Finally, Clayton M. Christensen, Harvard Business School professor and author of The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail, spoke about the disruptive influences of new technologies and why large companies have difficulty anticipating and preparing for changing trends. 
  Tomorrow's activities will include a 25th anniversary symposium on the history of fiber optics, featuring such speakers as award-winning researcher and past OSA president Tingye Li; Donald Keck, the 1993 inductee into the Inventor's Hal of Fame; and Charles Kao and John MacChesney, co-recipients of the 1999 Charles Stark Draper Prize.