I love this approach – great leading from Microvision.

Are there ways that companies can get past the issue discussed above transparently as they gain more interest and have a large volume of questions submitted (and hence not manageable to answer all in one conference call?)

One potential solution I can think of would be having the ability, via an interactive facility on the Blog, for other investors to vote for the question (submitted via Blog comment) and get a “leaderboard” running. That way the company can mange expectations by capping the number of questions answered at a certain limit that is optimal for the conference call environment.

From here a commitment to answering the other questions that were not got to on the call could be made whether this was via subsequent blog posts, an investor-only call or an audio/video investor presentation recorded after the original event.

One question I did have was what are the pros and cons of separating these calls (for audience benefit) based on an assumption that the nature of questions from investors and analysts may be quite different in scope? Also, where do media/bloggers fit into this equation?

What specific question did you have that was not answered? I read all the questions that were posted on the blog and listened to the call and thought they’d all been answered in response to other questions.

I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect that every question will be asked and answered when it’s a repeat of something that has already been addressed. Do not let your disappointment with the stock’s performance cloud your judgment about this practice. Also, we have to consider in this case that management does not have answers to some key questions.

That said, I agree with you that some acknowledgment of the people who took the time to ask questions online would have been better. People need to know that management actually got the questions, considered them, and chose not to answer any directly because they’d already been addressed.

This is the first time this has been done and I expect that the process will be refined going forward with the benefit of input such as you have provided here. But if investors are going to shoot down the practice, then why would companies bother to try opening up their calls? Let’s encourage them.

I was very disapointed. Others on the MVIS message boards have expressed similar concerns. Many of us have always suspected that Microvision executive staff really don’t want to hear from investors during conference call Q&A and I suspect that this blog businees was mostly a smoke screen. If I’m wrong, then I would expect to hear specific answers to our specific questions — I did not and have not.

Liked “Microvision opens up earnings call via blog” [link to post]

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RT @irwebreport Microvision opens up earnings call via blog [link to post]

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It isn’t often that you find a good IR social media case study. Here is one though from Microvision (via @irwebreport) [link to post]

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Paying attention to real people media in the corporate world. Microvision opens up earnings call via blog [link to post]

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RT @shel: Hot damn! An IR blogging success story! And I’m in it! [link to post]

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Hot damn! An IR blogging success story! And I’m in it! [link to post]

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