SAN DIEGO, August 3 -- SPIE began winding down its 46th Annual meeting as the exhibit ended on Thursday, while technical sessions, short courses and workshops were slated to end Friday. A special workshop on optical clusters took place Thursday as part of SPIE's program to promote optical clusters worldwide. The workshop was run by Bob Breault, of Breault Research Organization Inc., and explored the efforts to build optics clusters throughout the world via regional affiliations of research institutions and corporations. SPIE periodically sponsors cluster building and cluster practices sessions at regional conferences. Several of these have already been held in various geographical regions. Thursday's workshop began a new series of sessions on "Optics Clusters: How They Form and How they Work."