Just saw the story pop up on CNet about last night’s DEMO 2006 recap dinner, at which the show’s producer, Chris Shipley, gave out the event’s legendary “Demo God” awards. [I was on a plane home at the time, writing another blog post.] No surprise that Krugle was one winner, for their game-changing open-source code search engine. They were definitely a pick of mine (see previous post from early this morning), as was the “Pleo” robotic toy (how could that miss?). But, wow, the fact that enterprise software and services companies dominated the list so much — that shocks me! I liked some of these winners, but the buzz just wasn’t there, IMHO. The fact that none of the consumer-services companies — zip! — made the list leaves me wondering: huh? That category was the dominant one. So much for Web 2.0/social networking at Demo, I guess (well, for their CEOs being top-notch presenters, anyway). I thought some did great pitches, and I blogged about several of these consumer services companies in previous posts from the event (scroll down to see): Vizrea, SmileBox, Tiny Pictures, Kaboodle, LocaModa, TagWorld, Blurb, GarageBand.com, EQO Communications. Hey, we wuz robbed… 🙂

Tag: Demo 2006

I need something to do on the plane home, so thought I’d write a different sort of post….with all the names from all the business cards I collected at the conference! (Apologies to those I met that I didn’t get cards from.) Here’s the list, roughly in order from when I got there Monday afternoon through Wednesday at about 5:45 pm when I had to split for the airport (sadly, before the final dinner). Note: these are not necessarily people I met for the first time — some I already knew and just renewed friendships with.

Robert Wray, CEO, StreetDeck.com (MP3Car.com)…Steve Larsen, CEO, Krugle…Mitch Musgrove, VP Sales and Bus Dev, SimpleFeed…Brian Jacobs, General Partner, Emergence Capital Partners…Don Thorson, VP Marketing, Krugle…Bill Tam, CEO, EQO Communications…Melody Haller, President, Antenna Group PR (for EQO)…Azhar Khan, VP Engineering, Riya…Danny Yang, Senior Researcher, Riya…Shel Israel, co-author, “Naked Conversations,” and blogger for Conferenza…Gordon Ritter, General Partner, Emergence Capital Partners…Stephanie Houser, President, Launch…Colin Crook, Account Supervisor, Voce Communications (for Blurb)…Erica Lee, President of Strategiclee…Fred Krueger, CEO, TagWorld…D.K. Kim, CEO, ZIngee…Tim English, Marketing Manager, Digislide (Adelaide, Australia)…John Schultheiss, Founder, Grass Roots Software…Gail Bronson, Founder, InternetAssist…John Mitchell, Chief Architect, Krugle…Emily Melton, Associate, Draper Fisher Jurvetson…Ali Partovi, CEO, GarageBand.com…Burak Gokturk, CTO and Co-Founder, Riya…Jim Tybur, Trinity Ventures…Jeff Steeves, Associate, Prism Venture Partners…Scott Danish, VP Global Marketing, CNet Channel…Dan Summa, Venture Partner, Genesys Partners…Jim Kollegger, Chairman/CEO, Genesys Partners…Maryse Thomas, Co-Founder, Pokeware.com (Minneapolis)…Amy Wohl, Editor, Amy Wohl’s Opinions…Sean Captain, freelance journalist for NY Times, Wired, CNet, PC World…John Barnabas, Reporter, KFNN (Tempe, AZ), Bloomberg News Radio…Renee Blodgett, President, Blodgett Communications…Mark Carlson, CEO, SimpleFeed…Mike Toutonghi, CEO, Vizrea…Steve Toutonghi, VP Product Management, Vizrea…Manish Chandra, CEO, Kaboodle…Julie O’Grady, President, O’Grady Communications (for Kaboodle)…Dana Kibler, VP, GRP Partners…Jill Ratkevic, PR Director, Accomplice Software…Jason Feinsmith, CEO, Accomplice Software…Herminio De Faria, Head of US Office, Bouygues Telecom (France)…Will Aldrich, presenter for Yahoo!

Wish I had time to email every one! But if any of you drop into my blog, say hi. It was a pleasure meeting every one of you… What a great conference, huh?

Tag: Demo 2006

[Written at 41,000 feet, somewhere over Nebraska?]

This Demo 2006 news comes from AOL, of all companies. (Conference presenters aren’t necessarily limited to startups. There were actually four public companies this year.) This post, however, is really about a hot company called Truveo, which AOL acquired last year. Founder Tim Tuttle told us that there are now some 20 billion video streams on the web. AOL launched its video search capability in June 2005 with 2.5 million searchable assets. In the fall of 2005, the company introduced DVD quality video search. But now, in about three weeks…[drum roll]…what you’ll be getting with AOL’s service is Truveo’s technology. It’s based on what’s called “visual crawling” and has been in development in a quiet corner of Silicon Valley for more than two years. Tuttle promised you’ll now be able to “find a lot more video.” He also said that, through an AOL partnership with Intel, you’ll even be able to watch it on your TV, not just your computer. “Great things are just around the corner,” he said. “We’re finally delivering on the promise of video search becoming as ubiquitous as web search.”

Tag: Demo 2006