SPIE Photonics West 2027 — the one conference, as a visitor

Stages: → 1 (pre-booked meetings become qualified workflows) and → 4 (budget conversations with labs already in the pipeline). Buyer pages to bring (links, not print): biomedical QPI · holography labs · industrial QA · design partnership.

This is the only conference slot this cycle. We attend as a visitor: no booth, no sponsorship, no paid listing. The value is pre-booked meetings with named people whose workflows we already know.

The facts (checked 2026-10-12)

Fact	Value	Status
Event	SPIE Photonics West 2027	—
Dates	Saturday January 30 – Thursday February 4, 2027	verified against the Moscone Center event listing and an exhibitor's event page (Fraunhofer IPMS)
Venue	Moscone Center (North, South and West), San Francisco, CA	verified (Moscone listing)
Exhibition	February 2–4, 2027	consistent with the brief and a third-party event listing; re-verify on spie.org
Co-located expos	Photonics West Exhibition, BiOS Expo (biomedical optics — relevant to the QPI segment), AR/VR/MR, Quantum West, Vision Tech	listed by an industry association; BiOS Expo days not verified
Registration open?	unknown — spie.org could not be read from our host on 2026-10-12 (it served an empty bot-check page)	check by hand
Visitor / exhibition-only fee	unknown — not confirmed from spie.org; third-party resellers quote paid tickets, which we do not use	check by hand on spie.org only
Official page	https://spie.org/conferences-and-exhibitions/photonics-west	—

Before any spend: open the official page in a browser, record the registration status and the exhibition-only (visitor) price with a dated screenshot, and replace the two "unknown" rows above (edit this source page and rebuild). Register only on spie.org, never through a reseller.

Budget line (request to the operator, written go required)

Item	Amount	Status
Visitor / exhibition-only badge, 1 person	unknown — verify on spie.org	no booth, no conference-paper fees
Travel + 3 nights San Francisco (Feb 1–4)	operator estimate	economy; no client entertaining budget
Booth, sponsorship, lead-scanner rental, paid meeting rooms	$0 — not allowed	page 00 hard rule 6

Target list method (start 8 weeks out, ~Dec 7, 2026)

Pipeline first: every lab at stages 1–4 whose people are likely to attend (US West Coast groups, exhibitors, authors). Ask them directly.
Program search: when the technical program is public, search it for digital holography, quantitative phase imaging, interferometry, optical computing and holographic tomography sessions; list authors from groups on our design-partner targets or prospect log.
Exhibitors (industrial QA, lab-side only): metrology-instrument makers and applied-research institutes as information only. Production-line and do-not-approach organisations stay off the list (page 29).
Cap at 15 named people; rank by pipeline stage, then segment fit.

Artifact: a target sheet (name, org, segment, stage, session/booth, meeting status) in the log.

Pre-booked meeting script (send 3–4 weeks out, plain text)

Subject: 20 minutes at Photonics West (Feb 2-4)?

Dear <Name>,

I'll be at Photonics West as a visitor and saw <your talk "<title>" on
<day> | your group's work on <topic>>. Would you have 20 minutes on Feb 2, 3
or 4 for a coffee near Moscone? I'd like to understand how your group gets
from a <geometry> frame to a number you publish, and show (on a laptop, your
setup's parameters) what our hosted reconstruction returns: a result ID and an
evidence record anyone can recompute. No pitch deck.

If you'd rather check fit first: https://api.apertureapi.com/docs/workflow-fit

<your name>

One follow-up after 7 days. Artifact: meetings in the calendar with location; target sheet updated.

At the show

Bring: a laptop with the workflow-fit check ready, each target's saved fit response, the result ZIP from our public sample. No printed brochures.
Each meeting: their workflow in one sentence → fit check live → ask for one frame + metadata after the show → ask who owns the budget if they are already at stage 2–3.
Talks: attend the holography/QPI sessions of your targets; questions in the room are about their method, never a pitch.
Claims rule unchanged (page 00): no figures, no speed, no accuracy; biomedical = research tooling; industrial = lab-side only.

Post-show follow-up (within 3 working days)

Each meeting: thank-you + their fit verdict + the matching buyer page + the one ask agreed at the table (frame, reference, budget owner).
Every person met becomes or updates a log row with source pw2027.
Invite all to the next monthly clinic (page 26).
A one-page show report to the operator: meetings held, stage movements, cost actually spent vs the budget line.

Artifact: follow-up emails sent; show report filed.