Focus issue introduction: nonlinear photonics

It is now 23 years since the first Topical Meeting "Nonlinear Guided Wave Phenomena" (Houston, TX, February 2-4, 1989) has been organised by George Stegeman and Allan Boardman with support of the Optical Society of America. These series of the OSA conferences known as NLGW, continued under the name "Nonlinear Photonics" starting from 2007. The latest one, in Colorado Springs in June 17-21, 2012 has been a great success despite the fierce fires advancing around the city at the time of the conference. This Focus issue is a collection of several papers presented at the conference with extended content submitted to Optics Express. Although this collection is small in comparison to the total number of papers presented at the conference, it gives a flavor of the topics considered at the meeting. It is also worthy to mention here that the next meeting "Nonlinear Photonics" is planned to be held in Barcelona - one of the main European centers on this subject.