This is my tenth DEMO event (do I win a pony?) — nine of them in a row. (UPDATE: I recounted, and it's actually my eleventh DEMO, ten in a row.) I started live-tweeting from the event about five or six DEMOs back, then realized it would be better to cover this great conference using a live-blogging tool — i.e., more flexibility, longer posts, and I could integrate my Twitter feed (or anyone else's) right in the live-blog. I used ScribbleLive to do that two or three times. This time, I'm trying a different tool, CoverItLive, which seems to be a little better, more features, etc. I started this live event while I was still enroute from Minneapolis (while on a layover in the Phoenix airport), and I set the event to include all tweets using the hashtage #democon (the main one) or #demofall, since I couldn't post anything while on the plane. Now that I'm here at the Hyatt Santa Clara, I'm going to change the settings back to just my own Twitter feed, along with my CoverItLive posts. It's Monday about 2:30 pm Pacific time, and I'm in my room about to go register. The hotel lobby is pretty full with attendees ghathering already. DEMOfall kicks off at 5:30 with an opening reception, and I plan to post from my CoverItLive iPhone app, shoot some pix to attach to them, and do some audio interviews. I'll upload the latter to my blog as regular posts, some hopefully later on this evening, as well as through the next two days of DEMOfall 2010.
Category: Venture Capital/M&A/Angels (Page 19 of 54)
Clustrix is all about clustered database systems for Internet-scale applications. It claims the first solution to "combine the high scalability of NoSQL key-value stores with robust relational database functionality, immediate transactional consistency, and seamless deployment of SQL." Lest you think it's blowing smoke, the company was funded last month to the tune of $18 million by Sequoia Capital, U.S. Venture Partners (USVP), and ATA Ventures. 
CEO and cofounder Paul Mikesell (who also participated in a great panel at the Structure conference) was previously cofounder of Isilon, which went IPO a few years ago and recently has had a valuation of around $1 billion. Now he's back to build another company from scratch.
Paul talked to me about what his new firm is doing, and why. Here's the news announcement Clustrix made at Structure.
This year’s Glue Conference is the second annual, and I’m glad to be back. The dates are May 26-27, and it’s at a new venue this year: the Omni Interlocken Resort in Broomfield, CO. Nice views of the mountains, and a golf course, too (like I care). This year, the night before has a new wrinkle: we’re having a barcamp (unconference) starting at 4:00 pm today, May 25: CloudCamp @Gluecon, also known as #cloudcampdenver.
Here’s my live-blog page, which uses a service called ScribbleLive. I began posting to it earlier today, doing checks-ins while in route, etc, and I also have my Twitter posts appearing there — plus I had all tweets containing “gluecon” appearing there for a while, too. 
I’ll begin posting again once CloudCamp starts up, and will continue through tomorrow and Thursday, till the Glue conference ends about 5:00 pm that day. Comments are turned on in the ScribbleLive blog (moderated), so speak your piece if you like.
Note: This live-blog is also appearing concurrently on a new developer community site from Alcatel-Lucent, called Open API Service. So, you can view all the action on this blog page there as well.
Today, I had an opportunity to meet with a couple of the good folks
from Gist, a startup based in Seattle that helps you "Know More about
Who You Know." It's a neat app that I've been using for some time, and
that includes their native iPhone app — which is a great way
to stay in touch when I'm on the go with what my network is up to. I
also love the daily email updates I get from Gist that give me all the
latest content from my most important contacts.
I sat down for breakfast with Robert Pease, VP of Marketing, and Jenn Pitts, Marketing Operations Manager, who were in town for a conference. My friend Buzz Bruggeman in Seattle was nice enough to give me a heads-up that Robert and Jenn were coming to Minneapolis, and I thought it would be a great
opportunity to get an update on the company. I had previously met the CEO, T.A. McCann, last year at a couple of conferences I attend in Denver, Defrag and Glue, where I had first learned about the company's app.
Here's the audio interview I recorded of our conversation, which is about 22 minutes long. Excuse the sound quality, because we were in the very large lobby restaurant in the Hyatt downtown, and there was a fair amount of background noise. At one point, there was even a loud clap of thunder outside that interrupted our chat! But it was good to hear about how this startup is doing in advancing its mission of helping people improve their relationships with the people and companies that matter most to them.
My last chance for an interview on the Pavilion floor at DEMO on Tuesday, before the final General Session was to begin, was to grab some time with the guys at Fliptop, a company that had introduced two new products in the Social & Media Technologies category on Monday. Take a listen as I interview CEO and founder Doug Camplejohn as he talks about "Fliptop for Publishers" and the "Fliptop Browser Button." (In the photo, that's Dan Chiao on the left, Director of Engineering, and John Haden, Account Manager, in the middle — a fellow Surfrider Foundation member! CEO Doug Camplejohn is in the background, being interviewed by my friend Amanda Coolong.)
• Download or listen to Graeme's interview with Fliptop (MP3)"
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