The FTM series began in July 1995 with the NATO Advanced Research Workshop entitled Future Trends in Microelectronics: Reflections on the Road to Nanotechnology. A "NATO Advanced Science Institutes Series" book under the same title, edited by Serge Luryi, Jimmy Xu, and Alex Zaslavsky, is available from Kluwer Academic [ISBN 0-7923-4169-4]
In addition to NATO, the 1995 Workshop was sponsored by a number of agences, including ARO (US), DRET (FRANCE), ONR (US), PHANTOMS Network (EU), Motorola (US), Nortel (Canada) and the US DoD European Office.
The workshop was held on a French island (Ile de Bendor) in a wonderful Mediterranean setting. It was judged a great success. The partial list of attendees (invitation only) included Herbert Kroemer, Klaus von Klitzing, Karl Hess, Kostya Likharev, Arto Nurmikko, Paul Solomon, Horst Stormer, Armin Wieder, Eli Yablonovich ... a number of R&D directors and VPs of large corporations and the president of Cambridge University ... total of about 60 people.
Comments from the respondents have also been very encouraging. All enthusiastic, many offering suggestions, often very thoughtful and detailed. Comments from attendees of the previous meeting at Bendor are extremely positive. Examples: "One of the best meetings I ever attended...", "I do think the first meeting was a great success", "the previous one was one of the best I have participated in", "the 1st Bendor was one of the most enjoyable meetings in my life", "I'd be interested..., especially if it proves to be as enjoyable and stimulating as the last one", "your Bendor meeting was one of the most unusual and stimulating scientific meetings I have ever attended", "excellent memory from the Bendor meeting ...", etc.
An attractive idea suggested by several participants of the first meeting is to make the "Future Trends in Microelectronics" workshop a regular event, perhaps with a three year period. Note that three years seemed at the time to be the doubling period in current versions of Moore's Law (contrasted with the original one year). The second FTM workshop took place in 1998 at Ile des Embiez [FTM-II]. The third in 2001 again at Ile de Bendor [FTM-III]