I got to San Diego Monday and went to the Show that afternoon to get the lay of the land.  I was impressed with the sheer size of the Show, probably because it was all in one building.  I’m guessing there were about same number companies as at the Moscone event but I recognized more of them as this one was more communications-centric.   First impressions were most everyone was dressed in business casual attire.  collared shirts and hard shoes.  There was a very professional feel to the show.  Byron Patmon, Senior Vice President, Sales & Marketing, was the only one at the Denselight booth that afternoon.  I stopped and said hello to him.  He said Suresh and Dr Ring were there, but not at the booth at the moment.  It was kind of late in the day so I moved along.

The next day, my son joined me.  I had reserved seats to the jointly sponsored IEEE Photonics Society and The Optics Society Awards Ceremony luncheon.  We had a fine lunch and were treated to an eight-member string ensemble.  Considering the occasion it was appropriate.  The speakers were brief but Peter Winzer, Nokia Bell Labs, the recipient of the John Tyndall award made a nice speech.  Notable was his observation that when writing a scientific paper, the bibliography was of extreme importance.  Even if it takes 3x longer to write the bibliography than the paper itself, it needs to be done and it needs to be done right.  The point speaks to the respect that should be shown for the body of work that precedes each of us.  A point well taken by me, but more importantly my son, the young guy.  He gets it.

From there we had a list of booths to visit that day, and I must credit oz4 for outlining a lot of the connected companies in the photonics world.   It is a small world, so it seems.  First of all was, of course,  Denselight.  Byron, and Soma Sankaran, VP Sales Asia-Pacific, were there.  We stopped and chatted for a bit.  They were very busy compiling customers and contacts as apparently, our announcements had generated a lot of interest.  POET/Denselight seemed to be a popular place, so we did move along (can't get in the way of Sales).

On to Accelink and Hengtong who had booths adjacent to each other.  At Accelink, not too much of a reception for us there.  I mentioned all the names I could think of, including POET, but it didn’t help.  There was a language barrier and I’m not sure the everyone we saw knew of POET anyway.  The deal was still very new, and I don’t think I saw anyone in senior management.

Next door was Hengtong.  I was speaking with a younger fellow trying to get through the language barrier when an older, very distinguished looking fellow noticed us and came over.  He had a stern look and it seemed he wanted his assistant to usher us along so he could get to his other duties.  He looked like he could have been a government official.  I told him who I was but that didn’t help the situation until I mentioned Dr Andrew Rickman & Rockley Photonics.  At that point, almost instantly, the stern look vanished and changed into a nice smile and we spoke like we were good old friends.  He sent his assistant to gather gifts for us and we chatted a bit about his company, how large it is and how they are developing.  He said if I go to China I should be sure to call him.  I have a new friend in China. 

After that, I looked at my son.  Neither of us could believe what had just happened.  At Hengtong I think I was lucky enough to get a person in a senior position, at Accelink, not so much.  The MOU was still very new and the impact hadn’t made it through the ranks of their personnel yet.

I tried to catch Jean-Louise Malinge but he was not there.  The guys at the booth remembered me from SF and he was at the show, just not there at the moment. (unfortunately, I never did connect with him there).  I did notice, after the SF Show, he looked me up on my Linked-in page.

I was surprised, towards the end of that day, I asked my son if he wanted to walk the length of the floor again, at least a ¼ mile long and visit more booths.  It was 4:15-4:30.  The show closed at 5:00.  He wanted to stay and see more booths.  So we continued along our way, zig-zagging along, stopping at many, many booths to see what they had.   I was slightly surprised but happy to see the interest he had in the photonics world.  I had previously tried to explain how in cool it is but the words just came up short of the experience.

The next day I visited and re-visited more booths  At lunchtime you can grab a sandwich and sit at large round tables.  A great way to meet people.  I was seated and a fellow came and sat next to me.  A little while later two young women came to our table, one tossed a spoon into his plate and sat down a few chairs away.  Nothing was said for a while, (awkward moments) so I said, “I hope you know him”.  Everyone cracked up and yes they were together.  They worked for the same firm and were from San Diego.  Although they didn’t have a booth, they were looking to see what’s new.  I told them about POET and what we do, and our possible new partner, Accelink.  They were very interested, in POET as a stock and the technology.  That was even before I told them about SLED and the fiber-optic sensing platform for gas detection – the LUXMUX product line.  They were very interested in POET as an investment and as a customer.  I know they went to our booth because he called later for the booth number and directions.

Later when I went to our booth, Bill Ring was there.  He said he had a little time to chat so I sat down with him.  I mentioned the Dr Rickman transceiver announcement and he had heard it.  I asked, so is our transceiver better.  He said likes ours much better.  He said the key is the dielectric waveguides and the interposer.  I think he had a pretty good feel for what Rockley was doing but couldn’t say.  Dr Ring is from Wales and knows Andrew  Rickman.  He said Dr Rickman accumulated his assets during the dot-com boom and was there at the right time with a little luck.  He had a very limited timeframe available, and had another meeting and had to go off.  Our guys were kept very busy with meetings at the Show.  Dr Ring answered my thank you note this morning.  I figured his impression of the Show was much more relevant than mine.   He said his take-away from the Show was the Datacenter market is very competitive and continues to push the limits of the devices.  He thought more Electronic DSP (digital signal processing) control will enter the DC market over the next 5-10 years and is something that was a key take-away for him at the Show.  He said he was looking forward to the PIC conference in Brussels.  He said he is on the Arm Chair Panel, so that should be interesting.  Really a great guy and he seemed very confident with our platform.

I never did see Suresh,  He was constantly in meetings.  I think there was a lot of activity surrounding our recent announcements with Accelink.   Probably other interested parties.  I went to our booth and hung out with Soma and Byron a few times over the course of the show but Suresh never appeared.  I found the same situation with Andrew Rickman.  I went to the Rockley Photonics a few times.   Dr Rickman was always in meetings. 

I did go to the IQE booth.  Of course, they are from Wales and have a foundry there. I sat down and chatted the guys there.  They all knew Dr Bill Ring.  They also were familiar with POET.  I was slightly surprised and asked how they knew about POET.  They were unanimous in saying the photonics world is small and they pretty much know all the players.  They were happy to hear I was a shareholder of IQE.  They complained about some of the bad press they had a while ago.  They said there were some baseless negative comments in the media they couldn’t respond to because of NDA’s.  Unfortunate but the sp did take a tumble.   I think they have a good future, in that they are using compound semiconductors, the basis of photonic chips.  Wales is making a big move to become a center in the photonics world. They have a lot of support from the government of Wales.   I wished them well. 

After that, I made a point of asking other booth’s staff if they had heard of POET.  A large percentage of them had heard of POET.  From Germany with Philips VCSEL Company to Schott Packaging Company (from Singapore) to Oclaro Company, and many more, all knew about POET and thought highly of them.

Of course, I did ask Oclaro guys about Lumentum purchase of their company.  The two I talked to said they didn’t know what would happen but didn’t think it was necessarily a bad thing for them.

Overall it was a great show.   Very much more photonic communications oriented than SPIE in San Francisco.  I did see many 100g – 400g transceivers, but the consensus was, they were either priced very high or they didn’t work well, and the market couldn’t broadly embrace any of them at this time.

I came away with a feeling POET was going to be a leader and was easily right there with the best.  So, POET will need a growth pattern to do that physically (which seems to be on track), but I think we have the personnel on par with the best of them.  I think Suresh had a long-term plan (two years seems kind of long-term to me) and he has positioned POET to be in the right place, product-wise, and somehow he figured no one would have an efficient integrated system before us.  That seems to be the case.  It is 2018, right about the time Suresh said we should see results.  The results seem to be unfolding before us.  I find all this rather exciting. It was my privilege to contribute this report.  Thanks to the many other contributors to the Forum.   I will have to say, very much of the above material were my opinion only.  I wish the best of luck to the longs here.  Cheers      Bt  :)