We added badges to the forum to reflect your optics experience and role!

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We finally added badges, which reflect your expertise and role in the optics community (thanks @SpireStarter for the recommendation!).

Currently, there are badges for optical design, software developers, metrology experts, and illumination designers, as well as teachers and advocates of optics. I plan to add more badges, if you all think of any badges that you want listed please let me know. Some of you may have already seen a badge pop up, if so it is because I went back and did my best to tag posts that merited a badge.

As a side note, I was recently made aware of some potential hiring managers pursuing the forum, so if you are looking for a job and want to promote yourself make a post or drop a reply highlighting your expertise and I will be sure to add a badge to your name! This will let everyone know your role and experience!

Cheers!

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Wow, that was fast! Thanks, @lrgraves ! This is so great.

Am I not seeing a link already on the main page to find other users? And is there a way to search by badge?

When I’m looking for an OE to subcontract to or send projects directly to when I don’t have time to manage them, here are some other “badge” categories in my head that I sort by:

Within illumination:

  • Luminaries (commercial/residential have regulatory requirements and different data formats you need to export to clients)

  • Exterior Automotive Lighting (again, different regulatory knowledge is key here. When someone has this they are highly qualified for other types of regulated headlamp designs – for example, electric scooter headlamps.)

  • Lit Effects (on the illumination side, but almost considered displays at times. Artistic bent a la Amazon’s Echo Spy Device. Interior automotive lighting could also fall in this category)
    image

Within Imaging:

  • Near Eye (including AR/VR, + all the other weird stuff our companies came across in that category last year. :wink: )

  • Machine Vision

  • Microscopy

  • Display Tech (or maybe this doesn’t belong in imaging, but its own thing? I mean when you form an image like an iPhone screen. I do NOT mean the pretty trim lighting for other types of displays, nor back-lit text panels like in a car’s dashboard or a cockpit. I consider those illumination-side designs.)

  • Plain Ole Imaging Optic Design (For most everything else imaging. I guess that would be what you consider the “optical design” box?)

Within LASER Stuff

  • Laser Development (actually putting together laser specs to build a custom laser)

  • Laser PROCESS Development (developing the running specs of the laser to use within a larger manufacturing process - like heat-treating - or a lab process.)

  • LiDAR

NON-Imaging Sensor Stuff

  • Non-Imaging Sensors (these can be IR sensors or things like distance measurement or detection sensors that use IR or Visible light plus a CMOS or CCD but aren’t creating an image.).

Fiber Optics

  • Optical Communication

  • Fiber Optics for Sensing (or other not-communications applications)

…

…Probably some I’m forgetting. I’ve come across so many friggin random projects while wandering around the world!

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