Well, it's that time again. Twice each year, I cover the DEMO conference — and this time around it's DEMO Spring, in warm, sunny Palm Desert. It's been a long, cold winter! I'm excited, because, as I noted in my previous post, 65 really exciting new ventures will be launching! The event will be hosted by new executive director Matt Marshall, the CEO and editor-in-chief of VentureBeat.
Here's the page where my live-blogging posts will appear, in real time as they are published. To do this live blogging, I'm using a great tool designed
just for this purpose called "ScribbleLive." 
My on-site coverage will begin soon after I arrive on Sunday March 21 (the opening reception is that evening), and will run through late Tuesday afternoon March 23, when the conference wraps up.
Before my last DEMO event (Fall '09), I always live-tweeted the proceedings, rather than
doing live blogging. That changed as of last fall. The tweeting had worked okay, but this live-blogging approach I decided I like better, for a
number of reasons: (1) I'm not limited to 140 characters per post… (2)
I find it a nice middle ground between doing short, often hard-to-write
(and understand!) tweets and the more rambling long-form blogging…
(3) it's as fast or faster than tweeting… (4) it's way faster than me
trying to post quickly on my own Typepad blog here… and (5) it
prevents many of my Twitter followers from getting mad and unfollowing
me when I'm doing so many rapid-fire tweets at events, which for a DEMO
can be upwards of a couple hundred! Another cool thing is that I can
attach a photo to any of my live-blog posts as well. (Though I will also
upload all my pix to a Flickr set during and right after the event.)
The tool also allows me to attach an audio or video file, if I wish, but
I don't expect to do that.
For me, as a longtime event reporter,
this ScribbleLive tool is really an ideal solution. Here's my live-blog archive of DEMOfall '09. And here's another example of how myself and three other blogger colleagues used this tool simultaneously for the first
time: it was at the the Blogwell event at General Mills in Minneapolis last year.
I
look forward to DEMO Spring 2010, and hope I hear from you — whether during the
event, before, or after. I will likely be publishing some other,
stand-alone posts here on this blog while at DEMO — namely, audio
interviews, as I did starting at DEMO Spring '09. To communicate with me,
you can always post comments here at my blog. Or, talk to me via
Twitter by putting @GraemeThickins at the beginning of your tweets —
since I will be monitoring Twitter search closely as I live-blog the
event. Get this — if I want to tweet once in a while, those will appear automatically in this live blog, too. Pretty cool.
Look for me in the DEMO ballroom — I'll be in my usual spot in row three of the press section,
right down in front.
Thanks for the pictures and blog of the event. What did you think of Michael E. Parker’s presentation of InOutCashManagement?