Two weeks and counting till February 6 when I’ll be arriving in Phoenix to begin reporting on the Demo ’06 conference. Can’t wait. Suffice it to say any conference that first brought to the limelight such technologies as TiVo, Java, VMware, Salesforce.com, and Movable Type is worth your attention. And, as the countdown shortens, the anticipation grows… What new companies will we first learn about at this one? What technology will we look back on in, say, five years and think, “Oh, yeah, I was there at Demo in 2006, when they first debuted that one.”? Demo is the grand-daddy tech event of them all, as Shel Israel tells us in this Conferenza post. And they should know, having reported on more of them than anyone.

Demo producer Chris Shipley said in her New Year’s DEMOletter blog post that 2006 would be The Year of Collaboration. That is so right on in my book. What she means, the part that struck me the most, is this: “People working individually and collaboratively are the value-add in a network of intelligent machines and massive data stores.” And she goes on in a followup blog post to clarify: “People, not tools, will drive 2006.” With that in mind, all the more reason to get to an event like this — to experience the things you can only get face-to-face…

There will be close to 70 company presentations. The ones I’m especially looking forward to will be in these sessions (with descriptions from the Demo site):
> The Search Is On – “With Google stock marching toward $500 per share, there’s no question that search technology is at the heart of big business. It’s no wonder, then, that “dozens of startups are wading into the waters of search. . . in search of more relevant, computationally-derived results across a range of data types.”
> It’s All Relevant – “As information proliferates – in databases, in email inboxes, on giant local and networked data stores – identifying, retrieving, analyzing and using that data becomes exponentially more difficult. Whether tackling gargantuan data stores or the every-day parade of messages, these companies are finding relevance in the haystacks of information that threaten to overwhelm us.”
I’m especially liking that last one, since I’ve been researching and writing about that topic lately…

Watch for more from me as Demo approaches, as I’m sure you’ll see from other bloggers who’ll also be reporting live from the event. Some have already started to post. Press attendance will be awesome: how’s WSJ’s Walt Mossberg and Forbes’ Quentin Hardy for starters?