January Meeting

The meeting on Saturday, January 8, was the normal general meeting with the annual shareholders' meeting and board of directors' meeting sandwiched in.

The shareholders' meeting elected an almost unchanged slate of directors: Dan Drake, Mike Ford, Keith Marcelius, and John Walker.   Jack Stuppin declined to continue to serve on the board because of problems with stock exchange regulations, but will work unofficially with the board.

The board in its turn confirmed the corporate officers:

  John Walker          President
  Daniel Drake         Vice President, Secretary
  Keith B. Marcelius   Treasurer, Assistant Secretary
  Robert R. Tufts      Assistant Secretary
  Roxie Walker         Assistant Treasurer

The reason for all the funny assistants is that the signatures of one or more officers are required on many formal documents, including the application for a California resale permit. With an assistant treasurer in Marin and assistant secretaries in the Eastbay and at the law office, we save a good deal of time and hassle.

John Walker presented the financial report, the crux of which is that our liquid capital is down to about $17,000.

We have two sources of additional capital. Marinchip has warrants to buy 40,000 shares at $1.00 a share; it bought warrants because it lacked the cash to buy in for that much last spring, Marinchip now has enough cash to exercise part or all of the warrants. Also, the original capitalization plan included 20,000 options for John Walker; by oversight, these haven't been awarded yet, but the board intends to approve them as soon as it can print the paperwork.

Sales up to January 8: 4 AutoCAD-80; 1 AutoCAD-86; backlog of 2 AutoCAD-80s; 2 AutoScreens. AutoScreen is now part of the Engineering     Work Station sold by Jamal Munshi of MOMS Computing.

AutoCAD-80 is running on the Aurora 1000 from Graphic Development Lab,     which has sent out 500 of our brochures; the product will be officially released soon. A dimensioning package is being released as   an independent add-on for $500 list.

AutoCAD-86 is scheduled for release on both the IBM PC and the Victor/Sirius on January 15. The features included will be those in the preliminary AutoCAD manual, with an upgrade somewhat later. Sun-Flex, the maker of the Touch Pen, will be selling their product with AutoCAD (for the Victor) and is talking of selling 100 in February, gearing up to 300 a month soon.

We have many contacts with companies that are interested in AutoCAD, including Fortune and Houston Instruments (which wants a demo of the things we can do with their plotters).

Jack Stuppin has connections in the educational publishing business,   which could lead to some profitable ventures. It is not too early to think about what programs we'll produce after AutoDesk has been released and AutoCAD has stabilized.

Dave Kalish raised the idea of a sort of personal computer software   division, built around people in the South Bay who are unable to work on AutoCAD because of conflict of interest and geographical isolation. There was general agreement that this was a good idea. Possible projects include a menu-planning package that Dave is working on with some other people, and the sort of educational programs that Jack's associates might put us onto.

To improve communications in the company, there will be a bi-weekly mailing of interesting items to everyone in the company. Interesting items might be anything from news clippings to suggestions for ADI products to project reports. Announcements and minutes will be in the package if they come out at the right time. Items sent to Roxie at headquarters will be Xeroxed and sent with the next mailing.

There was a strong consensus that we must have minutes of meetings in some form, and an agenda enforced by someone with a mandate to keep meetings from rambling. Dan Drake agreed to resume the minutes and assume the role of enforcer if no one else volunteered, and was elected by a unanimous silence.

Duff Kurland expressed interest in working full time, if some kind of arrangement for pay could be worked out so that he would not be in effect plowing a few thousand a month into the company. This brought up the situation of Greg Lutz, who has been working full time on AutoCAD-86, and Dan Drake, who has given ADI preemptive priority over paying work; with both having to switch into a non-destructive financial operating mode, the project's technical manpower was about to be reduced to one part-time person.

By unanimous vote it was agreed that Greg would get a subsistence of $1,000 a month for the next four months, in return for which he could give AutoCAD-86 his undivided attention. Everyone else was asked to submit a letter to Jack Stuppin, giving the specific conditions under which he would be able to work full time for ADI. With those letters we could plan to take on more full-time people as the cash flow picked up.

Last October or thereabouts there was to have been a special all-day brainstorming meeting on how best to manage the company, but it was bumped by one crisis or another. Dave Kalish pointed out that there was as much need as ever for this meeting, so it was rescheduled for Sunday, February 13, tentatively at Jack Stuppin's house at 11 A.M.

One thing that has become apparent is that we often don't know, or don't agree on, what has been actually decided at a meeting. Here, then, is the first instance of a feature that will appear in all minutes, though perhaps in some prettier form. If you think it's inaccurate, speak now or forever hold your peace.