I’ve been blessed to have some good opportunities while in the San Francisco Bay Area and this past week was no different. Last Monday, my adventures took me to San Diego to attend the Fall 2009 edition of DEMO. If you don’t know, DEMO is one of the biggest stages out there for companies to launch their products. Interestingly enough, this season’s edition of DEMO took place a week after one of their competitor’s held their own startup conference.

The premise behind DEMO is simple. Companies or startups apply and the ones that are selected are the ones that will be launching a product that very day. I’ve found the selection at DEMO to be pretty different than the ones featured at TechCrunch50. DEMO is more focused on both the consumer-facing applications and the enterprise model, while it seemed that TechCrunch50 is just on the consumer side.

DEMO winners are awarded $1 million to the two best consumer and enterprise company – $500,000 each…not a bad takeaway, huh? This year the winners were Emo Labs for their invisible “zero-footprint” speaker systems and also Liaise for their automation of the capture & management of KeyPoints buried inside emails, IMs and other communications.

This year was somewhat of a transition for DEMO as after 13 years, executive producer Chris Shipley will be stepping down and turning the reins over to VentureBeat’s own Matt Marshall. It seems to be that VentureBeat will be handling the planning for DEMO moving forward.

As a disclosure, I was asked to be the official event photographer for DEMO and had a great time meeting people at the conference and it’s definitely one to rival that of TechCrunch’s prized conference. I felt that they could work on the performance of the wireless Internet though as I’ve found it pretty spotty throughout the entire conference – perhaps a sign I need to get a EVDO card for my laptop?

But here are some photos of the event, credit (of course) going to the fine folks at DEMO who put on a remarkable conference. Definitely worth going to, if you want to see the latest and greatest launching.

Welcome to DEMO Fall 2009 in San Diego!

The Opening Reception at the DEMO Conference.

Mashable’s own Ben Parr & Jennifer Van Grove were on scene at DEMO to report on the startups.

MyOwnRealEstate.com on the main stage presenting their product.

The OrganIP team at the DEMO pavilion.

Karl Long & the Traackr, Inc. team in the DEMO pavilion.

LeapFILE team in the DEMO pavilion.

Satish Dharmaraj, Omar Hamoui and Anu Shukla on the DEMO main stage to recap the presentations.

VentureBeat’s Matt Marshall dancing with Chris Shipley (executive producer) at DEMO.

Chris Shipley officially turning over the reins of DEMO to Matt Marshall.

One of the winners of the $1 million prize: Emo Labs with Matt Marshall and Chris Shipley.

The second winner of the $1 million prize: Liaise with Matt Marshall and Chris Shipley.

Congratulations Chris! DEMO wishes you well and much success.

More photos from DEMO can be found by clicking here.

by Brian Solis

This weekend I’m headed to Palm Springs to cover DEMO 09.  The opening reception kicks-off on Sunday with the first company taking the stage on Monday morning.

This is a particularly exciting DEMO as it will be the first to feature VentureBeat’s Matt Marshall who will officially take the reigns from Chris Shipley starting with DEMO Fall 2009. The duo will co-host this event.

Here’s the lineup, which was just released today:

7 Billion People, Inc.; Austin, TX
Always Innovating, Inc.; Mountain View, CA
AppZero Corp.; Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Asurion Mobile Applications, Inc.; San Mateo, CA
Avaak, Inc.; San Diego, CA
BitGravity, Inc.; Burlingame, CA
bluBuzz, LLC; Holland, MI
Cc:Betty, Inc.; Palo Alto, CA
Citrix Online, Goleta, CA
Coveroo, Inc.; San Francisco, CA
deskNET, Lausanne, CH
Document Depository Corp., LLC; Wayne, PA
eFormic, Ltd.; Stuttgart, DE
Ensembli, Ltd.; Sheffield, Great Britain
Evri, Inc.; Seattle, WA
Gazaro, Inc.; Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
HAM-IT, Inc.; North Andover, MA
Home-Account, Inc.; San Francisco, CA
HowSimple, LLC; Huntington Beach, CA
Jadoos, Inc.; Sunnyvale, CA
Kutano Corp.; Burnaby, BC, Canada
Liquid Media, LLC; Arvada, CO
Ontier, Inc.; Portland, OR
Primal Fusion, Inc.; Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
Promptu Systems Corp.; Menlo Park, CA
Purewire, Inc.; Atlanta, GA
Qualcomm MEMS Technologies, Inc. San Diego, CA
Qubes, Inc.; Taipei, Taiwan
Silverstone Solutions, Inc. San Francisco, CA
Skout, Inc.; San Francisco, CA
SmartyCard; San Mateo, CA
Symantec Corp.; Mountain View, CA
Technicopia, LLC; Carmel Valley, CA
Transformyx, Inc.; Baton Rouge, LA
Vokle, Inc.; Santa Monica, CA
Xandros, Inc.; Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
XMARKS; San Francisco, CA
Zipadi Technologies, LLC; Bluffdale, UT
Zuora, Inc.; Redwood City, CA

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by Brian Solis

Shot at Graphing Social Patterns

Shot at DEMO

Disclosure: Chris Shipley and Matt Marshall are good friends)

I guess the rumors over the last year were true.

After 13 as Executive Producer of DEMO, Chris Shipley is passing the torch to VentureBeat founder, and blogger, Matt Marshall.

The DEMO conference is the world-renowned launch platform for some of the most notable emerging technologies introduced over the past two decades.

Chris Shipley, DEMO Executive Producer for the past 13 years, will step down following the DEMOfall event this September.

Marshall will assume the role of Co-Executive Producer for the DEMO 09 and DEMOfall 09 events working alongside Shipley, who is Founder and Chairman of Guidewire Group, the world’s leading analyst firm focused on early-stage companies and emerging markets. For 2010 events and beyond, Marshall will become the sole Executive Producer on the DEMO stage and VentureBeat will take over the task of sourcing, vetting and selecting the companies who will present at each DEMO as well as provide a wide range of new content elements and product offerings to grow and evolve the brand.

Marshall will be just the fourth Executive Producer of DEMO in its near-20 year history.  The DEMO conference was founded by Stewart Alsop in 1991.

See you in March.

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