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.