Reflections & analysis about innovation, technology, startups, investing, healthcare, and more .... with a focus on Minnesota, Land of 10,000 Lakes. Blogging continuously since 2005.

Category: Marketing/Branding/PR (Page 12 of 29)

Hints of What’s Coming at DEMO ’09

As noted to the right in my sidebar, I'll be reporting from the DEMO conference coming up soon in Southern California. I always look forward to this time of year. I think it will be my seventh or eighth DEMO event in a row (they're held twice a year), and maybe my tenth overall. DEMO is "The Launchpad for Emerging Technology."  DEMO-09-logo+dates
Nowhere else can you get a reading on what's coming in tech better than you can at this event. Click in that graphic to the right for details about registering.

DEMO prides itself in finding the "diamonds in the rough" before anyone else. Over the years, this event has been the site of the first launch of such ventures as Palm, Java, TiVo, and E*TRADE in the mid/late '90s, and, in more recent years, Salesforce.com, VMware, Six Apart, OddPost, IronPort, GrandCentral, and Glam Media, to name a few. 
DEMO says it focuses "on real products ready for market—regardless of their geography." Presenting firms hail from many countries.

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So, who attends this thing?  Media and bloggers, VCs, business development professionals, IT executives, and new technology firms from all over the world.  DEMO says 15,000 people have attended their events over the past
19 years. Read more here: Who Attends DEMO? Here's a sampling of companies the people of DEMO have told me will be attending the upcoming event on March 1-3: Deutsche Telekom AG, August Capital, Meakem Becker Venture Capital, First Round Capital, Allegis Capital, Motorola, Google, Hitachi America, Microsoft, Qualcomm, Symantec, UBS, NYSE, Wall Street Journal, The Economist, VentureBeat, Business Week, Forbes, ABC, eWeek, North Bridge Ventures, NTTCOMWARE, Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, Verizon, Alcatel-Lucent, SVB Capital, Mayfield Fund, Granite Ventures, New Enterprise Associates, and more.

What kinds of firms will be pitching?  Well, DEMO doesn't let out much in advance of the show — certainly not the list of presenters. That's a big secret. (Companies actually have been dropped from the event if they leak that they're presenting. And we press attendees, of course, have to honor that embargo as well.) The list of presenters is only released the Friday night before the event, which kicks off with a Sunday night reception. (I always post that list of presenters as soon as it's released to the press, so watch this space on the evening of February 27th.)  But the DEMO producers did provide me with an interesting set of stats on the DEMO '09 presenters, represented in a couple of charts. So, here's a Breakdown of DEMO '09 Presenters by Market Segment and Funding to Date:

DEMO-09-stats But should we really be expecting much excitement at DEMO this year?  Isn't the economy in the tank?  Does innovation really move ahead in these times?  You bet it does!  And the DEMO blog cites recent examples of that from the 2001 downturn. Sure, there will be fewer attendees, and fewer presenters. For the last several shows, we've seen about 65 presenters on average doing their six-minute pitches at each event. This time, it will undoubtedly be less, maybe may even fewer than 50. But I guarantee you we'll be hearing some of tomorrow's big winners, on stage for the first time. Because we always do. And the anticipation of that is, frankly, really exciting to me, and to the rest of 500+ who will be attending. It is an extremely upbeat affair, every single time.

There are some great updates being posted on The DEMO Blog, by Chris Shipley, Executive Producer, and other staff members.  Here are three recent posts:

Two Panels Just Announced for DEMO '09 … VCs on one, past DEMO company CEOs on the other
Smart Money Takes a Flight to Quality … "yes, it's a great time to throw a conference that launches new technology products, spots trends, and celebrates innovation"
Making a Lasting Impact … about how one past DEMO presenter, battery company Boston Power, is growing rapidly

And give a quick listen to a podcast about DEMO '09 recorded on January 29 by my friend Keith Shaw of Network World and Carla Thompson of the Guidewire Group.

Your intrepid reporter: pumped and ready. I can't wait to live-tweet DEMO '09! I did somewhere between 200 and 300 newsy tweets at the last one — so (fair warning) get ready for the firehose!  And I'll be doing podcast interviews for the first time, too, with my whiz-bang new toy: a studio-quality handheld recorder. I'm gonna give it a go in the way of some short, ad-hoc interviews of presenting company founders, VCs, and various luminaries wandering the great hall, the pavilion, and (of course) the hallways. And I'm told I can upload these pretty quickly to my blog, giving those of you who can't be there at least a near-realtime sense of what's going on at DEMO.

Will you be going to DEMO '09?  If so, let us know in the comments! (And let's try to meet up face-to-face.)  If you can't make it, what would you most like to see covered? What answers would you be seeking if you were there? What you would most want to get out of the event?

Minnedemo Was Great … Now, How About Those Business Models?

If you're part of the Minnesota Internet and software community and you missed Minnedemo on Friday night, you must be bummed — as several of you told me from afar as I was tweetin' it … :-)  Minnedemo-logo
[Evidenced by this clip from my twitterstream that night, which shows a few of those who were talking back at me in real time.]  You missed a great event.  No worries, though, because myself and my buddies at Minnov8 posted lots of audio and video recorded at the event for your listening and viewing pleasure.

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But, for those of you who were there, how many of you noticed what I did?  Namely, the almost complete lack of the presenters talking about their business model?

I have something to propose for future Minnedemo pitches: how about, as part of the 7-minute presentation, a new rule is instituted that states a minimum of one minute of that has to be devoted to explaining the business model? Is that an unreasonable request? Even thirty seconds would be a welcome addition.

Now, I realize the traditional audience of Minnedemo is developers, listening to their fellow developers on stage presenting their cool, new code creations.  Elegance in app design and functionality have been the focus of pretty much every presentation I've seen at these events.  Or features.  Or UI design.  But, is not the end-game in all this something that might actually be commercially viable, too?  That is, a business that could make it in the real world?  From where I sit, more and more business people and investors have started to attend these quasi-quarterly events.

I don't mean to imply that none of the presenters on Friday night has a business plan. Of course, all but the very newest, coolest projects must have one, right?  And it would then follow that these presenting companies would have to have a business model for how they will make money.  They just didn't talk about it Friday night — or, in most cases, even mention it.

I say that's a big thing missing from Minnedemo. What do you think?  Should presenters be required to talk more about such things?

The Clear and Simple Solution to the Current Downturn: The Entrepreneurial Economy

The big answer to our current economic plight is not a new one: it is staring us right in the face. It has brought us out of many a recession before this one, and it will do so again. It is simply this: the ingenuity and perseverance of the American entrepreneur. Something never be taken lightly! 

I was delighted to recently stumble across a blog post from GrowThink entitled The "Downturn" — Keeping Things in Perspective, by the firm's founder, Jay TuroIt is so good, I just want to do everything I can to spread it. GrowThink-blog
I *so* wish I would have written it, because this every message has been going around in my head for some time now. And it's a message I guarantee you won't get from the mainstream media!

I wanted to call it out here as required reading.  What you should get out of it is this: stop paying attention to the "woe-is-me" media … flight negativity with every bone in your body … and do everything you can to support our country's strong, ever-committed entrepreneurial economy.  It is THE major source of new jobs and wealth creation in this country, and we all benefit from it greatly in myriad ways, directly or indirectly.  It has been, and will continue to be, what makes our economy grow, and our country great.  And no recession can hold it down!  People, layoffs are about the past — the entrepreneurial economy is about the future…and change, positive change!!

I believe the year 2009 will bring great things, and I'm very proud to say I'm a supporter and believer in American Capitalism.  It is the best political and economic system in the world, and it's a strong now as it ever was.

UPDATE 12/22/08: I was delighted to see that my friend Brian Solis wrote an *absolutely awesome* post on TechCrunch the day after I posted the above, called Fear Kills Businesses, Dead.  It's a great complement to what I'm saying here in my post.  There are so many reasons for businesses to be positive — yes, right now — particularly if you're a lean, mean, nimble tech startup!  Read this post by Brian, and take it to heart!  It even quotes my friend and past client Steve Larsen, who used to be based here in Minnesota.  (See an article I wrote on Steve earlier this year, which appeared on "Chief Executive" magazine's site: Zen and the Art of Startup Maintenance.)

How to Watch High-Def TV on Your Mac – Cheap

Got a cool new product to tell you about — the Pinnacle TV for Mac HD Mini Stick. (Pinnacle is a division of Avid.)  It's available now, and you can find it priced around $120 at various online stores.  I was lucky enough to get my hands on a review copy recently (thanks, Andy Marken, PR guru extraordinaire), and I have to say I'm impressed. PinnacleHD-ministick
I don't watch a whole lot of TV — mostly sports and news (of course)…and, oh, documentaries (great for helping one fall asleep).  But I gotta say I sure enjoy the TV experience much more watching in HD!  (I include some quick screenshots here that I snapped last evening of the awesome Sunday Night Football game between the Redskins and the Cowboys.)

Till now, I didn't even own an HD set — that's how little I care about watching TV.  So, this post is both a result of my being amazed at the quality of HD, and the fact that I can now easily watch TV on my MacBook.  And I can watch it in whatever window size I want, even fullscreen.

So what is it?  The heart of the system (as shown above) is a little USB 2.0 HDTV tuner stick.  It lets you watch HDTV for free on your Mac, based on whatever broadcast HDTV signals you can pick up in your location. It picks up these signals via a telescoping antenna that plugs into the tuner stick and has about a five-foot cord so you can position it for best reception. It even has a strong magnet on the base so you can mount it to a metal surface for better reception. (I attached it last night to the large hanging light fixture over my kitchen table, and got great reception. Note: be careful to keep that magnet away from your hard drive!) I was able to pick up about 15 HD channels over the air here in the suburban Twin Cities, and I expect that number will be increasing over time.

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You can get a ton more channels (in most locations, I suspect) if you have cable TV service in your home.  Just connect a coax cable to the HD stick (via an adaptor included) and connect that to a cable TV outlet in your home. They say that will get you all the HD channels your carrier provides, except for the premium channels. I expect that could be somewhere between 60 and 100 in my town, though I haven't tried it yet. But, wow, that Sunday Night Football game last evening (broadcast via our local NBC affiliate, KARE) sure was an excellent viewing experience.

So, again for you tech-spec freaks: the Pinnacle HD mini stick "supports both digital over-the-air TV (ATSC) and unencrypted digital cable TV (Clear QAM)."

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Time-Shifting, Anyone?
But, wait — that's not all, sports fans. Don't you dare stop reading. The HD mini stick comes with software that lets you record HDTV programs and play them back anytime. And you can record to either your hard drive or to DVD. The software is Elgato's EyeTV® Lite TV viewing and recording software. So now, for about $120,  you've turned your Mac not only into an HDTV set, but a TiVo as well! To schedule your recordings, the installation process signs you up (if you elect) to a free Internet-based electronic program guide.

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Suddenly, that $120 add-on to your Mac is starting to look like even more of a bargain, no?  Talk about a fun, new toy….

What's also cool is it comes with a nifty little mini remote control, which worked flawlessly for me. It even had the battery already installed (just pull a little plastic tab thingy to activate it). And, to top off the contents in the small box — a really nicely designed package — you get a little flannel travel bag with a drawstring that nicely holds all the piece-parts, so you can easily take it along in your briefcase or suitcase.

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I wonder how many geeks with laptops we're gonna see now in Starbucks or wherever watching TV instead of working? (Oh, you non-Mac people — poor souls — there's a version for you, too.  So don't go getting all pouty.)

The Installation and Setup Process

I must say that my experience with this product overall was excellent, from the time I opened the box. I don't know who at Pinnacle is in charge of "customer experience," but my hat's off to them.  This one was a pleasure — well-designed packaging, nice, easy-to-read instructions, and the entire setup and installation of the software went without a hitch all the way through. Great onscreen instructions and prompts, too — very simple and intuitive.  Everything as I would have wanted it. This experience was the closest I think I've seen to "the Apple experience."  And that is a very high bar.  So, I not only highly recommend this product, as working great and doing what it promises, but I recommend it as a very satisfying customer experience overall. I think you'll agree. 

I can hear the sound of cash registers right now ringing up lots of holiday sales for this one…

UPDATE (11/17/08): I just realized I wrote this review without saying a single negative thing about the product. Well, I've been trying to think of one, but I really can't. Oh, I guess the cord from the antenna base to the USB stick could be a little longer — like maybe 8 feet. And I noticed the USB stick can get kinda hot, but I'm not sure if that's an issue, since my viewing was not affected. Those are about the only things remotely approaching a downside that I can think of.

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