2005 Annual Shareholders Meeting Notes

I needed this. Over the last few weeks, I had been pretty beaten down. Watching the stock fall day after day had taken its toll on me. So it was a real delight for me to attend the 2005 Annual Shareholders Meeting.

The first thing that strikes me is that the people who work at Microvision are fired up. They are excited about their jobs and what they see happening. They seem highly motivated and eager, and they will have to be -- for they are tasked with something that many people would choose to shy away from: to change the world.

One look around at the display of different products and prototypes and the totality of the opportunity that is Microvision becomes clear. There is the MicroHUD, now in a form factor that can fit in the smallest of vehicle dashboards. Looking bright and clear and crisp, the image seemed to hover out over where the hood of the car would be. It is not hard to imagine this product becoming the defacto standard for vehicle HUDs in the next couple of model years. It has some compelling advantages which Rick touched on in his presentation, but just seeing it, and having seen LCD based HUDs, it is easy to see that Microvision's product is simply head and shoulders above competitors using fixed-pixel, backlit displays.

The next product I got to see was the laser microcamera prototype produced for Ethicon Endo-Surgery. This thing is absolutely astonishingly small. The scanner was about the size of the head of a pin and the diameter of the entire device was maybe 5 millimeters. Affixed to the end of what I assumed to be a fiber-optic cable with some kind of protective covering, the little scanner head seemed like it would cause minimal trauma reporting back data on somebody's insides. The brilliance and capability of an engineering staff that can create something so elegant and so small and yet so functional can simply not be overstated. These guys are good.

There was a big Nomad stand with a bunch of Nomad-enabled guys. Lots of folks tried them on and it brings a smile to my face to see lots of people walking around wearing Nomads. It is easy to put yourself forward a couple of years and imagine the world where wearable computing with see-through head-up displays are a necessary fact of life for millions of people.

I did my best to push that world forward at today's meeting. I pretty much had two things that I wanted to express to whoever would listen:

1. Develop a fashionable eyeglass version of Nomad to go with Microsoft's new Mobile 5.0 operating system for smartphones. The 'push email' capability allows users to receive emails on the go without having to sync up to their email server. I believe this is a killer app, and that monochrome red displays are not a limiting factor to mainstream adoption. Limiting factors are things like form-factor and battery life. But the value to executives, and email and text-message addicts of being able to carry on text conversations whether in SMS or email while walking, and not having to look down at a handheld is enormous. In mono-red, with the promise of full color versions to come, this could be a ridiculously huge application -- and it really plays to our see-through capability which competitors can't even approach.

2. Let's fund the development of a prototype of our 9 megapixel LED widescreen display to show off to the world. Having a full color occluded display for gaming or wearable multi-media applications would go a long ways toward illustrating our value proposition, especially in light of the fact that our specification has 50 times the resolution and 5 times the field of view of LCD-based competitors. People can understand and appreciate the value of something like this, if they can get a chance to see it. That would help the stock price.

(Unfortunately, I forgot to bring up that using sexy girls to show off the Nomad would also help move some units.)

Across from the Nomad table was what looked like the 'military CRT-replacement display' table that I hadn't seen before. This was hooked up to what looked like a night-vision camera and was very cool looking. I didn't spend too much time looking at that but was pretty impressed.

Then there was the Flic table. This was setup with a couple of laptops and a cell phone. They had the Cordless Collector software or some variant set up and it was very cool to scan the bar code on a CD and have the album artwork and track listing pop up into the inventory application. This kind of thing gives me hope. It is all about the software. Hardware is great, and that is what we are selling. But software drives the need for hardware and it's always going to be that way. So focus on new types of software (yes, like MSFT Mobile 5.0...) and how our hardware can elevate the user-experience is the way to go. There is a new guy in charge of Flic sales and he has really got things jumping. Looking for good things from him and the continued focus on software, in particular mobile workforce productivity applications.

The EVF was there, as brilliant as ever. Can somebody make some edge-emitting LEDs, please? We've got a killer display platform if you'd like to...

Next to that was the Spectrum SD2500, the same unit I saw back in May. This unit has had some miles put on it and has been shown all over to various military folks. They have been understandably impressed. The image quality on this thing is extremely high. And it's see-through, and high-brightness, too. Today's $4.4M contract from GD will have the control box that's currently the size of a toaster shrunk down to around the size of the current Nomad wearable computer unit, so that it can be worn by soldiers. Considering they got the light source box down from a fridge to a toaster in one year, going from a toaster to a belt-computer seems doable to me. And I would never underestimate what these engineers are capable of accomplishing.

Then Rick gave his presentation, which I've done my best to detail below. I had a great time and really felt my spirit and energy renewed by the combination of outstanding products and the enthusiasm of the people who are working to bring them into being. I am hopeful as ever, and continue to believe Ray Kurzweil when he says that by 2009, Microvision displays are ubiquitous -- and that the staff at Microvision will have succeeded in changing the world as we know it.

Also, I want to say thanks to fellow shareholders and MVIS employees alike who introduced themselves to me and told me that they enjoy MVIS Blog. Thanks for your continued readership!