Reflections & analysis about innovation, technology, startups, investing, healthcare, and more .... with a focus on Minnesota, Land of 10,000 Lakes. Blogging continuously since 2005.
So, how does a presenting company stand out at DEMO? Ask BizEquity.com, led by DEMO returnee Ami Kassar (on the far left). This new site helps you find out what any small business is worth — so they all dressed up like, you got it, small business owners. Ami is in pizza shop garb, complete with tomato sauce stains… 🙂
In addition to having a Twitter account — @demofall08 — DEMO has a nice blog feed set up at a site created by EventVue, which you can see here. Actually, it’s just part of an entire social network for the conference. I joined it over the weekend, so my posts will be there. (And my tweets appear at their Twitter page, too.) In the screen shot below, you can see that at least one TechCrunch50 blogger is already using the blog feed. Figures.
UPDATE: Hah, just found another Twitter account that DEMO runs — @demotweets — which I see has been going for some time now. I guess it will also have updates about the event. The other Twitter page mentioned at the top is for the purpose of aggregating tweets from attendees, so it was just set up a couple days ago.
You may have been seeing some of the talk online about TechCrunch50 taking potshots at DEMO as its organizers try to get publicity for their new event, which they purposely scheduled during the same timeframe as the venerable, long-standing event. 
Can you say "in your face"? DEMO is now going into its 19th year and has become widely regarded over that time as the place for promising new startups to launch. The TC50 organizers are trying to claim that they somehow are more pure because they do not charge a fee to the startups they accept to present, while DEMO long has done so — widely seen as the price for the process DEMO puts a presenting company through to benefit from its first-class brand of company launch experience, which includes all the positive things that go along with that in the way of publicity and investor exposure.
I'm about to leave for San Diego to attend DEMOfall 08, which will be about my seventh time covering their events as a press registrant. They are very, very well run events. I also have a press pass to TechCrunch50, although, since the dates of the two conferences directly overlap, I will only be able to attend that last day of TC50 (in San Francisco), on Wednesday. I'd like to take in all of both events, but I can't; no one can, except from a distance or online.
TC50, despite its name, is actually debuting 52 companies. DEMO will have 72 presenters. Another difference between the events is that DEMO always releases its list of presenters the Friday before the event, which typically starts with a Sunday evening reception. TC50 has chosen to be, uh, different, saying it will only release names of its companies at 6:30 am Pacific on Monday, and that's only for companies who will pitch that day. It won't release the names of those presenting on Tuesday and Wednesday until 6:30 am on each of those days. Do some people know already who's presenting? Sure, I suspect word leaks out a lot from the companies themselves, although both shows prohibit news being formally released before their "embargoes" lift on Monday. (Note that press attendees' inboxes begin filling up days before both events, but they of course expect us to honor the embargoes, and I do.)
So, what do I think about all the hype going back an forth (most from the TC50 side) about this competition for Startup Launch King-of-the-Hill Event? A lot of distraction, really — which even TC now admits. This is supposed to be about the startups. I wholeheartedly agree. It seems there are plenty of them out there, so what's the problem with two events like this? Why does one have to be in the other's face? (It would just make a lot more sense if the events were scheduled separately.) I have a take on how they're different in other ways, too. DEMO, over the years, has increasingly tended to attract more established startups — which, of course, have no problem paying their fee. Many have raised Series A and B rounds by the time they get there, and I've seen many beyond that stage. Thus, the fee is a pittance for them, especially for the benefits they gain. (And it costs them more than that to have good PR support for the event.) DEMO has even taken to having 4 or 5 large firms introduce new products or services at each of their events. My hometown boys from Best Buy being a prime example at the year's DEMOfall… TC50, on the other hand, seems to be seeking raw startups for its event, those that have raised little or no money. Thus, not having to pay a fee is a good thing for them. More power to 'em! But it will be a different type of event than DEMO for that reason: earlier stage startups than most (not all) of DEMO's presenters.
Another way I'm thinking TC50 will likely be different: I suspect many more of their presenters will be Bay Area based. DEMO has long prided itself in its companies being from all over the U.S., and increasingly the world. (See my last post for the number of countries this year's DEMOfall class will be from.) We'll see how TC50's companies stack up in this regard next week
I did not attend TC's first attempt at a conference last year (called TC40), but I heard from a very experienced tech PR person at DEMOfall last year, who had come directly from it to DEMO, that it was "pretty horrible." I'm hoping for their sake, and for all the hype and expectations they have created, that they do better this year. And, most of all, for the sake of the startups — who may have not invested a fee into the TC50 event, but have surely invested many, many hours of preparation. And that's money, too.
I’ll be attending the DEMOfall 08 conference in San Diego, September 7-9, 2008. 
Close to 100 media and bloggers will be there, with total attendance expected to be the largest ever (I predict close to 1000).
Here are some excerpts from DEMO’s press release, which just hit the wire, including the complete list of presenting companies, A to Z, and their web addresses:
Leading Technology Conference Continues to Highlight
the Best in Entrepreneurship from Around the World
The DEMO conferences, known for launching some the world’s biggest technology products, will kick off this Sunday with 72 new products poised to launch onstage in just 72 hours. Beginning its 19th year of supporting innovation, DEMOfall 08 will highlight products from more than 11 countries and 19 states. Known as the conference that launched products from Google, Apple, Palm, Intel, Yahoo!, and TiVo, the fall conference will host one of its largest attendances of journalists, investors, and business professionals in its history. DEMOfall 08 is being held from September 7 – 9 at the Sheraton San Diego. To learn more about the event and register to attend, visit www.demo.com.
"Every DEMO, we strive to identify the companies that will defy all the odds and have significant impact in the technology markets. Ours is a year-long process that culminates in 72 hours of products that are more than disruptive; they change the rules of the game as we know it,” said Chris Shipley, product analyst and executive producer of the DEMO conferences. "I am very excited to unveil the class of DEMOfall 08. They are innovative, they are important, they are fun, and they represent the future products and solutions we all will be using soon.”
The DEMO conferences are held twice a year, requiring the DEMO team to hold in-depth interviews with more than 1,000 companies ready to launch new products at the event. This rigorous process ensures that DEMOfall 08 attendees will, for the first time, see new products from around the globe including Australia, Belgium, Canada, England, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Taiwan.
DEMOfall 08 Presenting Companies
Accordia Group, LLC; New Rochelle, NY; www.accordia-group.com
Adapx, Inc.; Seattle, WA; www.adapx.com
Alerts.com, Inc.; Bellvue, WA; www.alerts.com
Arsenal Interactive, Inc.; Mountain View, CA; www.heycosmo.com
Asyncast Corp; Campbell, CA; www.rocketron.com
Awind Inc.; Junghe, Taiwan; www.awindinc.com
beeTV; Milano, Italy; www.bee.tv
Best Buy; Minneapolis, MN; www.giftag.com
BizEquity Corp.; Spring House, PA; www.bizequity.com
Blue Lava Technologies, Inc.; Honolulu, HI; www.bluelavatech.com
Cerego; Tokyo, Japan; www.usa.iknow.co.jp
Cinergix, Pty Ltd.; Melbourne, Australia; www.creately.com
Clintworld; Boenningstedt, Germany; www.clintworld.de
CoreTrace Corp.; Austin, TX; www.coretrace.com
crowdSPRING, LLC; Chicago, IL; www.crowdspring.com
DesignIn, Inc.; Marblehead, MA; www.mydesignin.com
Dial Directions, Inc.; Alameda, CA; www.dialdirections.com
DOCCENTER; Omaha, NE; www.doccenterinc.com
Enterprise Informatics, Inc.; San Diego, CA; www.enterpriseinfomatics.com
Familybuilder; New York, NY; www.familybuilder.com
ffwd.com, Inc.; San Francisco, CA; www.ffwd.com
Fortressware, Inc.; Mountain View, CA; www.fortressw.com
Fusion-io; Salt Lake City, UT; www.fusionio.com
G.ho.st; Ramallah & Modin, Palestine and Israel; http://g.ho.st
Green Sherpa; Santa Barbara, CA; www.greensherpa.com
Infovell, Inc.; Menlo Park, CA; www.infovell.com
Intelius, Inc.; Bellevue, WA; www.zumende.com
Invision TV, LLC; Bethesda, MD; www.invision.tv
iWidgets, Inc.; San Francisco, CA; www.iwidgets.com
Kadoo Inc.; Washington, DC; www.kadoo.com
Koollage, Inc.; San Jose, CA; www.koollage.com
Mapflow, Ltd.; Cork, Ireland; www.eirlift.com
Maverick Mobile Solutions, Pvt. Ltd.; Maharashtra, India; www.maverickmobile.in
MeDeploy; Hamden, CT; www.medeploy.com
Message Sling; Worcester, MA; www.messagesling.com
MeWorks, Inc.; Taipei, Taiwan; www.meworks.net
Microstaq, Inc.; Austin, TX; www.microstaq.com
MixMatchMusic, Ltd.; Burlingame, CA; www.mixmatchmusic.com
Momindum; Paris, France; www.momindum.com
OpenACircle.com; Dallas, TX; www.openacircle.com
Paidinterviews, LLC; McLean, VA; www.paidinterviews.com
Paragent, LLC; Muncie, IN; www.paragent.com
Photrade, LLC; Cincinnati, OH; www.photrade.com
PlanDone, Inc.; Petaluma, CA; www.plandone.com
Plastic Logic, Ltd.; Mountain View, CA; www.plasticlogic.com
Qtask, Inc.; Burbank, CA; www.Qtask.com
Quantivo Corp.; San Mateo, CA; www.quantivo.com
Radiant Logic, Inc.; Novato, CA; www.radiantlogic.com
RealNetworks, Inc.; Seattle, WA; www.real.com
Rebus Technology, Inc.; Cupertino, CA; www.rebustechnology.net
RemoTV, Inc.; New Haven, CT; www.remotv.com
Rudder, Inc.; Houston, TX; www.rudder.com
Semanti Corp.; Alberta, Canada; www.semantifind.com
Sim Ops Studios, Inc.; San Francisco, CA; www.wildpockets.com
SitScape, Inc.; Vienna, VA; www.sitscape.com
SkyData Systems, Inc.; San Mateo, CA; www.skydata.com
SpinSpotter; Seattle, WA; www.spinspotter.com
Telnic, Ltd.; London, England; www.telnic.org
TetraBase, LLC; Boothwyn, PA; www.tetrabase.com
The Echo Nest Corp.; Somerville, MA; http://echonest.com
tikitag, an Alcatel-Lucent Venture; Antwerp, Belgium; www.tikitag.com
Toolgether; San Mateo, CA; www.toolgether.com
TravelMuse, Inc.; Los Altos, CA; www.travelmuse.com
Trinity Convergence, Inc.; Durham, NC; www.trinityconvergence.com
TurnTo Networks, Inc.; New York, NY; www.turnto.com
UbiEst S.p.A.; Treviso, Italy; www.ubiest.com
UGA Digital, Inc.; Taipei, Taiwan; www.ugadigital.com
Unity Solutions, LLC; Clearwater, FL; www.unitysolutions.com
Usable Security Systems, Inc.; San Francisco, CA; www.usable.com
WebDiet, Inc.; Henderson, NV; www.webdiet.com
Xumii, Inc.; San Mateo, CA; www.xumii.com
Zazengo, Inc.; Santa Cruz, CA; www.zazengo.com
UPDATE 8/10/08: Check out Apple’s Rotten Decision (via eWeek). It’s a report from the Black Hat Conference, where the writer says "Apple’s image was pilloried on the show floor."
A smart friend of mine, who’s the founder of a startup with a successful online application/platform — and a longtime Apple user and developer — told me recently he’s really unhappy with Apple of late. I must say I was taken aback! 
What, with all the hoopla about Apple’s latest consumer hits: the iPhone 3G and the wildly successful iTunes App Store (which I’m sure is up to 50 million downloads by now)? Can Apple actually do wrong? (Okay, with the obvious exception being the recent MobileMe launch, which they’ve already admitted they flubbed, and I have no doubt will be fixed soon — Steve will make sure of that.)
So, this was a real surprise to me — that such a longtime Apple believer and supporter could say something like this. I had to probe: "What on earth do you mean?" I wanted to get at what could possibly be behind his newfound negative feelings toward Apple.
Well, it turns out my friend has some very real concerns, and he makes a lot of sense — particularly because he speaks as someone who really understands the SaaS (software-as-a-service) business. So, here — unedited, in the raw — is his response to me:
BEGINNING OF APPLE RANT:
Graeme, I think part of the issue is that Apple’s culture is now at a mismatch with the SaaS and developer worlds. There certainly is a pattern here: arrogance and secrecy. Namely, SaaS and developer communities require transparency; Apple is more secretive than the CIA.
Ringtones
Apple tried damn hard to prevent people from making Ringtones of music they legitimately own. And you still have no mechanism for making Ringtones out of DRM’ed iTMS purchases without paying again for the song. And it is hard.
iPhone 3G Activation
In my opinion, the downfall of Apple (no, I am not really about to add myself to the legion of idiots predicting Apple’s doom over the years!) began with acquiescing to AT&T on the activation issue. I understand the legitimate business concerns involved, but the reality is that Apple re-invented the way a cell phone works with the original iPhone, and they gave away one of the coolest things about it with the iPhone 3G (the activation process). You can’t buy iPhones as presents any more!
But that was a nuisance.
MobileMe
So many things. One, the fiasco illustrates that Apple does not know a damn thing about web-based application hosting. They have iTunes working (more or less) right because it is so narrow in focus and so tightly controlled. But the MobileMe fiasco should not happen with any SaaS based system, ever.
And then their silence. They were silent for so long. When we finally heard from Apple, it was really just a note saying how Steve was forcing some dude who would give only his first name to blog about it every day or so. Contrast that with Amazon’s recent S3 fiasco. Amazon had updates every half hour for the duration of the outage, even if only to say we still don’t know any more than we did a half hour ago. For our online platform, we have a Twitter feed dedicated to system status so that our customers have ready access to what we know is wrong.
Every day or so? And saying nothing at all really in those communications. Inexcusable. The technical issues were about hard problems. The communication issues were easily fixed and never should happen in any scenario.
DNS Vulnerability
So, Apple knows about this vulnerability long before the rest of the world. The work of patching it is done for them. All of the major vendors of the world coordinate the announcement of the vulnerability and sending out patches.
Apple does nothing.
Weeks go by. Apple does nothing.
Exploits appear in the wild. Apple does nothing.
Eventually, Apple sends out a patch with the version of bind that is supposed to have the vulnerability patch. Somehow or another, it does not actually include port randomization features that protect against the vulnerability.
Apple does not send out the patch to non-server versions of OS X.
Apple never bothers to explain what it is up to or why it is failing to deliver timely patches.
I move my DNS off OS X for good. This was the final straw in the back that breaks OS X Server for me. I have been learning slowly over time that Apple is way too untrustworthy as a vendor of business services. This proved it.
In the meantime, Apple still has the vulnerability out there.
The App Store
Apple has proven the App Store concept is screwed up beyond belief. No ability to reasonably allow for trial use. No ability to reasonably have beta programs (the ad hoc deployment stuff is a fiasco in itself). But those are just feature complaints.
No one company should ever control what you can put on a device you own. If I want to pay $1,000 for "I am Rich", that’s my own damn prerogative. But even if we grant that right, the idea that they can remove apps from the store and tell no one anything about why it was removed? And what about if Apple corrupts my iTunes library and I need to re-install an app that I bought, but Apple later determined is not appropriate for their store? This is unacceptable.
———
END OF APPLE RANT. What do you think? Please speak your piece in the comments below.
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