First of all, the attendance is 700, which surprised me. Even more than Demo ’06 in February in Phoenix (generally regarded as the larger of the two events). So Becky Sniffen, longtime conference PR honcho (and a former MN resident while she attended Carlton College), told me at the very crowded outdoor cocktail reception alongside the harbor here in San Diego. “Well, the industry has been picking up,” she said. No lie.

The first guy I met at the reception (or should I say the first guy to find me) was Karl Harris, VP of engineering at Flurry.com, which has a very cool Java app that lets you get your email on the phone you have now. Yeah, that’s right, your small one — so you don’t have to carry around some humongous (and expensive) smart phone. Karl demoed it for me, right there, real fast, on his own phone. Now that’s the way it should be! Why beat around the bush? I think Karl had the best gig going at that reception. I was in a hurry to move on and work the crowd, and so was he. You have to love what Flurry enables: “Mobile email for everyone.” And it works on the RAZR, too, the one I carry, which Karl said is one of their most popular. Will yours work? Here’s what they say on the signup page: “All phones under 3 years old should work.” Check it out: a quick tour here. Karl told me the company is still early stage and not yet VC funded, but they’re looking to make connections here. [Plenty of opportunity for that.]

Sauntering over to the bar to grab another Pinot, I ran into Joe Lichtenburg, VP biz dev for Eluma, which is all about “social networking for brand marketers,” which sure got my attention. He said he’s amazed, even though his firm is just getting going, at the great reception he’s already getting from senior marketing execs to what they have to offer. These people are obviously hungry to tap the power of social networking, Joe said, but don’t quite know how. His firm, of course, will be happy to give them what they need. Two areas he’s especially focused on right now are the TV and newspaper markets. And I know Joe’s a smart guy because, when I immediately suggested he contact Internet Broadcasting System in the Twin Cities (one of the best kept secrets in the Internet business — specifically, they create and manage web sites for many TV stations), he said he just had, and had a great discussion with their head of biz dev.

[By the way, when I learned Joe has quite a background in middleware and web services, I had to bring up the mystery about another of the presenters at DEMOfall, Grand Central Communications (a question I posed in a previous post). Who are these guys, supposedly a VOIP startup, and why do they have the same name and domain as a web services company founded in 2000? Joe didn’t know, either. But I think solved the mystery this morning online. They’re funded by the guy who founded the company of the original name: Halsey Minor.]

We were then joined by Don Thorson, venerable Silicon Valley tech marketing guru, who I’d run into earlier — now with a new startup called Jajah. Don says this VOIP firm, founded by some Austrian guys, has a real simple message — “free global calls from regular phones.” Nuff said! But, as TechCrunch noted this morning, the secret here is making it dead simple. So far, offerings in this area are just too complicated for most people. But the market there is huge, and Jajah is a hot play for it. More later on this one…

Tags: DEMOfall 2006, Flurry, Eluma, Jajah