Graeme Thickins on Tech

Reflections & analysis about innovation, technology, startups, investing, healthcare, and more .... with a focus on Minnesota, Land of 10,000 Lakes. Blogging continuously since 2005.

Tag: angels (Page 1 of 2)

My Live Blogging of DEMO Spring 2010

March 20, 2010 / / 1 Comment

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." DEMO_2010-LiveBlogBanner   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.

DEMO Spring 2010 Announces Presenting Companies

March 19, 2010 / / 1 Comment

JWmarriottDesertSprings DEMO_2010-logo+dates As is
my custom, I’m publishing the list of DEMO presenters as soon as it’s
released.  What follows is an
excerpt from the press release that just hit the wire:

———

The
DEMO conference, the world-renowned launch platform for some of the most
notable emerging technologies introduced over the past two decades, today
announced the lineup of 65 companies that will share their never-before-seen
products and value propositions to the technology community at DEMO Spring 2010
on March 21-23 in Palm Desert, California (JW Marriott Desert Springs Resort).

The
DEMO conference opens a window into technology's future, and this year the
event will feature some of the most promising new products and prototypes from
a variety of different industries including Social and Media, Cloud,
Enterprise, Mobile, and Consumer Technologies.

DEMO
Spring 2010 is also excited to have VentureBeat Founder and CEO, Matt Marshall,
on board as DEMO’s new executive producer, who has evaluated and selected
leading-edge innovations to launch on the DEMO stage.  

In its
second year, sitting alongside the demonstrating class of DEMO Spring 2010, the
Alpha Pitch program will feature 13 early-stage entrepreneurs and pre-launch
mode companies that will have 90 seconds in the spotlight to share their
prototypes to the critical DEMO audience. To have qualified for the program,
each company must be pre-revenue, and have received no more than a seed round
of funding.

You can
still register to attend by going to the DEMO web site.  Live broadcast
over the web will be available through a partnership with DEMO 08
demonstrator and former DEMOgod award winner BitGravity,
for registered qualified members of the press.  Qualified members of the
press may request live viewing access via www.etouches.com/demovideo. Videos from
live DEMO Spring 2010 presentations will also be available within 24-48 hours
after each presentation on DEMO.com.

———

As
always, I will be covering the event on-site, posting some audio interviews as
I can, and also live-blogging the entire proceedings, as I did for DEMOfall
’09.

And now, ta-dah!  Here’s the just-released list….

DEMO
Spring 2010 Demonstrators:     

ABJK
NewCo, Inc.; Austin, Texas; www.zosh.com                                                                                  

AirSet;
Berkeley, California; www.airset.com                                                                                          

AppVoyage;
San Jose, California; www.appvoyage.com                                                                                   

AppWhirl,
Inc.; Mountain View, California; www.appwhirl.com                                         
                       

bloson;
Cambridge, Massachusetts; www.bloson.com                                                                           

BlueSkies
Hospitality Management Systems (HMS); Pendleton, Indiana; www.blueskieshms.com             

BrandFolium
Corporation; Sunnyvale, California; www.brandfolium.com                                                  

CalendarFly;
Pelham, New York; www.calendarfly.com                                                                           

Closely,
Inc.; Denver, Colorado; www.closely.com                                                                                 

Cloudscale,
Inc.; San Mateo, California; www.cloudscale.com                                                                

Democrasoft;
Santa Rosa, California; www.democrasoft.com                                                                

DigitalScirocco;
Seattle, Washington; www.digitalscirocco.com                                                              

Everloop;
Danville, California; www.everloop.com                                                                                  

eXaudios
Technologies; Ramat-Gan, Israel; www.exaudios.com                                                             

FathomDB;
San Francisco, California;

www.fathomdb.com

Fliptop;
San Francisco, California; www.fliptop.com                                                      
                       

General
Inspection, LLC; Davisburg, Michigan; www.generalinspection.com                                            

Genieo
Innovation; Herzlia Pituach, Israel; www.genieo.com                                                                    

GlideTV,
Inc.; Pleasanton, California; www.glidetv.com                                                                          

GreenNurture;
Tempe, Arizona; www.greennurture.com                                                               

gwabbit;
Carmel Valley, California; www.gwabbit.com                                                                            

Hillcrest
Labs; Rockville, Maryland; www.hillcrestlabs.com                                                          

InfoDome;
Oakland, California; www.InfoDome.com                                                                              

Infusionsoft;
Gilbert, Arizona; www.infusionsoft.com                                                                              

Invested.in;
Thousand Oaks, California; www.invested.in                                                                        

InVisage
Technologies, Inc.; Menlo Park, California; www.invisageinc.com                                                                                                                     

MightyMeeting,
Inc.; Setauket, New York; www.mightymeetings.com                                                       

MiniMash,
Inc.; Oakland, California; www.minimash.com                                                             

my6sense,
Inc.; Herzeliya Pituach, Israel; www.my6sense.com/                                                               

NetToons,
Inc.; El Cerrito, California; www.nettoons.com                                                            

Network
Hippo, Inc.; Ottawa, Ontario; www.networkhippo.com                                                                

nyoombl,
Inc.; Palo Alto, California; www.nyoombl.com                                                                         

Phone
Halo; Santa Barbara, California; www.phonehalo.com                                                                  

Pi
Mobility; Sausalito, California; www.pi.pngmobility.com                                                                            

Rebtel;
Stockholm, Nacka Strand; www.rebtel.com                                                                                 

Sharetivity;
Palo Alto, California; www.sharetivity.com                                                                            

SocialWish;
Brooklyn, New York;

www.socialwish.com                                                                                            

Solvate;
New York, New York; http://solvate.com                                                                                   

Supercool
School; San Francisco, California; www.SupercoolSchool.com                                                          

Sutus,
Inc.; Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada; www.sutus.com                                                            

Tastr,
Inc.; San Diego, California; http://xpenser.com/                                                                            

Teneros;
Mountain View, California; www.teneros.com                                                                            

Value-Centered
Solutions, Inc.; San Pablo, California; www.inoutcash.com                                             

VenueGen;
Morrisville, North Carolina; www.venuegen.com                                                                    

ViaCLIX;
Los Gatos, California; www.viaclix.com                                                                                               

VIC
Wave Communication, Inc.; Victoria, British Columbia; www.vicwave.net                                           

VISIARC;
Stockholm, Sweden;

www.visiarc.com
and www.mobiledocuments.com                            

Vivox; Natick,
Massachusetts; www.vivox.com                                                                                      

Voxofon,
LLC; Houston, Texas; www.voxofon.com                                                                               

Widgetbox;
San Francisco, California; www.clickturn.com                                                                      

Zerista,
Inc.; Denver, Colorado; www.zerista.com                                                                                   


DEMO
Spring 2010 AlphaPitch Companies:

flinc;
Dieburg, Germany; www.flinc.mobi                                                                                               

Immitter;
Los Angeles, California; www.immitter.com                                                                              

KarmaKorn;
Lindenhurst, Illinois;

www.KarmaKorn.com  

MEDL
Technology Co., Ltd.; Mongkok, Hong Kong; www.medltech.com                                                

neverend
media; Chapel Hill, North Carolina; www.neverendmedia.com                                                   

R3
d.o.o.; Maribor Slovenia, Europe; www.mmatcher.com                                                                      

PERMISSIONtosend;
Denbigh, Wales, UK;

www.permissiontosend.com

SocialOrbits,
LLC; Chicago, Illinois; www.SocialOrbits.com                                                        

Systems
Thinking Institute, LLC; Cedar Creek, Texas; www.systemkey.net                                               

TicketPlayground.com;
Plantation, Florida;

www.ticketplayground.com

ThickButtons;
Palo Alto, California;

www.thickbuttons.com

Yumit;
Madrid, Spain; www.yumit.com                                                                                                   

UppyMedia.com;
Alameda, California;

www.uppymedia.com                                           

ZURB;
Campbell, California;

www.zurb.com


An
additional excerpt from the press release: In addition to the exciting
companies that will take the stage, DEMO will host some of the single most
influential entrepreneurs, organizations, and venture capitalists in the industry
to participate in panel sessions on the key themes for the show, including:

– Social
and Media

– Cloud

–
Enterprise

– Mobile

–
Consumer Technologies

Matt
Marshall, Executive Producer of DEMO, will lead these panel discussions
throughout the multi-day conference.

———

I'll be at DEMO for the entire event, which starts late afternoon Sunday and goes through Tuesday evening.  If you'll be in attendance, I look forward to
meeting you!



DEMO ’09 Presenters Announced – Best Damn Gig Goin’ In This Economy, and I’m There!

February 27, 2009 / / 0 Comments

Could it be any more fun than getting to see this many entrepreneurs get up on stage and pitch their exciting new stuff at DEMO?  Or maybe you'd rather sit at home and whine about "the economy"?  Go ahead, wallow in your lamestream-media bullcrap.  DEMO-stage
 I'm goin' to the Disneyland of Entrepreneurship and Innovation: DEMO '09!  Where the excitement of what's new and what's coming next in cool, new technology will encourage and inspire all those lucky enough to be there.  And, if even if you can't be in the room, you'll have lots of online options to feel like you're almost there — which the DEMO folks tell you all about right here.

Yes, there are only 39 presenters this time, when 60-something have been common at most events in recent years.  But, hey, what would you expect in these times?  It's not quantity — it's quality!  The DEMO producers never disappoint on that.

Here's the current crop of lucky presenters:

• 7 Billion People, Inc., Austin, TX
• Always Innovating, Inc., Mountain View, CA
• AppZero Corp., Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
• Asurion Mobile Applications, Inc., San Mateo, CA
• Avaak, Inc., San Diego, CA
• BitGravity, Inc., Burlingame, CA
• bluBuzz, LLC, Holland, MI
• Cc:Betty, Inc., Palo Alto, CA
• Citrix Online, Goleta, CA
• Coveroo, Inc., San Francisco, CA
• deskNET, Lausanne, CH
• Document Depository Corp., LLC, Wayne, PA
• eFormic, Ltd., Stuttgart, DE
• Ensembli, Ltd., Sheffield, Great Britain
• Evri, Inc., Seattle, WA
• Gazaro, Inc., Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
• HAM-IT, Inc., North Andover, MA
• Home-Account, Inc., San Francisco, CA
• HowSimple, LLC, Huntington Beach, CA
• Jadoos, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA
• Kutano Corp., Burnaby, BC, Canada
• Liquid Media, LLC, Arvada, CO
• Ontier, Inc., Portland, OR
• Primal Fusion, Inc., Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
• Promptu Systems Corp., Menlo Park, CA
• Purewire, Inc., Atlanta, GA
• Qualcomm MEMS Technologies, Inc., San Diego, CA
• Qubes, Inc., Taipei, Taiwan
• Silverstone Solutions, Inc., San Francisco, CA
• Skout, Inc., San Francisco, CA
• SmartyCard, San Mateo, CA
• Symantec Corp., Mountain View, CA
• Technicopia, LLC, Carmel Valley, CA
• Transformyx, Inc., Baton Rouge, LA
• Vokle, Inc., Santa Monica, CA
• Xandros, Inc., Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
• XMARKS, San Francisco, CA
• Zipadi Technologies, LLC, Bluffdale, UT
• Zuora, Inc., Redwood City, CA

DEMO-09-logo+datesIf you're attending or presenting, look me up, starting Sunday evening at the opening reception. Then I'll be in the grand hall all day Monday and Tuesday, sitting in the press area up front.  In a new wrinkle this year, I'll be doing audio interviews with startup team members and various friends and colleagues I run into — then posting those MP3s regularly to my blog during the two-and-a-half days.  And, of course, I'll be live-tweeting the whole affair as well — as I have several times now.

To communicate with me, please comment here on my blog, or you can always reply or DM me on my Twitter page, which is simply @GraemeThickins.  Please follow me there for the full-on firehose of DEMO updates!  My tweets will also be running at this aggregator page, where all DEMO '09 attendees' tweets will appear: @DEMOchatter.

Hints of What’s Coming at DEMO ’09

February 16, 2009 / / 0 Comments

As noted to the right in my sidebar, I'll be reporting from the DEMO conference coming up soon in Southern California. I always look forward to this time of year. I think it will be my seventh or eighth DEMO event in a row (they're held twice a year), and maybe my tenth overall. DEMO is "The Launchpad for Emerging Technology."  DEMO-09-logo+dates
Nowhere else can you get a reading on what's coming in tech better than you can at this event. Click in that graphic to the right for details about registering.

DEMO prides itself in finding the "diamonds in the rough" before anyone else. Over the years, this event has been the site of the first launch of such ventures as Palm, Java, TiVo, and E*TRADE in the mid/late '90s, and, in more recent years, Salesforce.com, VMware, Six Apart, OddPost, IronPort, GrandCentral, and Glam Media, to name a few. 
DEMO says it focuses "on real products ready for market—regardless of their geography." Presenting firms hail from many countries.

DEMO-TheMomenContinues

So, who attends this thing?  Media and bloggers, VCs, business development professionals, IT executives, and new technology firms from all over the world.  DEMO says 15,000 people have attended their events over the past
19 years. Read more here: Who Attends DEMO? Here's a sampling of companies the people of DEMO have told me will be attending the upcoming event on March 1-3: Deutsche Telekom AG, August Capital, Meakem Becker Venture Capital, First Round Capital, Allegis Capital, Motorola, Google, Hitachi America, Microsoft, Qualcomm, Symantec, UBS, NYSE, Wall Street Journal, The Economist, VentureBeat, Business Week, Forbes, ABC, eWeek, North Bridge Ventures, NTTCOMWARE, Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, Verizon, Alcatel-Lucent, SVB Capital, Mayfield Fund, Granite Ventures, New Enterprise Associates, and more.

What kinds of firms will be pitching?  Well, DEMO doesn't let out much in advance of the show — certainly not the list of presenters. That's a big secret. (Companies actually have been dropped from the event if they leak that they're presenting. And we press attendees, of course, have to honor that embargo as well.) The list of presenters is only released the Friday night before the event, which kicks off with a Sunday night reception. (I always post that list of presenters as soon as it's released to the press, so watch this space on the evening of February 27th.)  But the DEMO producers did provide me with an interesting set of stats on the DEMO '09 presenters, represented in a couple of charts. So, here's a Breakdown of DEMO '09 Presenters by Market Segment and Funding to Date:

DEMO-09-stats But should we really be expecting much excitement at DEMO this year?  Isn't the economy in the tank?  Does innovation really move ahead in these times?  You bet it does!  And the DEMO blog cites recent examples of that from the 2001 downturn. Sure, there will be fewer attendees, and fewer presenters. For the last several shows, we've seen about 65 presenters on average doing their six-minute pitches at each event. This time, it will undoubtedly be less, maybe may even fewer than 50. But I guarantee you we'll be hearing some of tomorrow's big winners, on stage for the first time. Because we always do. And the anticipation of that is, frankly, really exciting to me, and to the rest of 500+ who will be attending. It is an extremely upbeat affair, every single time.

There are some great updates being posted on The DEMO Blog, by Chris Shipley, Executive Producer, and other staff members.  Here are three recent posts:

• Two Panels Just Announced for DEMO '09 … VCs on one, past DEMO company CEOs on the other
• Smart Money Takes a Flight to Quality … "yes, it's a great time to throw a conference that launches new technology products, spots trends, and celebrates innovation"
• Making a Lasting Impact … about how one past DEMO presenter, battery company Boston Power, is growing rapidly

And give a quick listen to a podcast about DEMO '09 recorded on January 29 by my friend Keith Shaw of Network World and Carla Thompson of the Guidewire Group.

Your intrepid reporter: pumped and ready. I can't wait to live-tweet DEMO '09! I did somewhere between 200 and 300 newsy tweets at the last one — so (fair warning) get ready for the firehose!  And I'll be doing podcast interviews for the first time, too, with my whiz-bang new toy: a studio-quality handheld recorder. I'm gonna give it a go in the way of some short, ad-hoc interviews of presenting company founders, VCs, and various luminaries wandering the great hall, the pavilion, and (of course) the hallways. And I'm told I can upload these pretty quickly to my blog, giving those of you who can't be there at least a near-realtime sense of what's going on at DEMO.

Will you be going to DEMO '09?  If so, let us know in the comments! (And let's try to meet up face-to-face.)  If you can't make it, what would you most like to see covered? What answers would you be seeking if you were there? What you would most want to get out of the event?

Geeks, Entrepreneurs, Designers, Angels, VCs, and Marketeers ….. Let’s Mix It Up!

May 4, 2008 / / 0 Comments

Minnebar is Saturday, May 10!  MInnesota’s all-day annual Barcamp event is not to be missed.  New venue this year (bigger and better): the gloriously redone Coffman Union at the U of MN (cool place if you haven’t checked it out yet). To sign up, just go the event site (a wiki page), hit Edit Page, and add your name and links. Minnebar(Minnebar is held once a year, while evening "Minnedemo" sessions are held in each of the other three quarters.)
Already, almost 300 of your compatriots have signed up for this year’s edition of Minnebar, and many more will be as the week progresses. It’s free! That’s right — the whole damn thing! (thanks to the sponsors) … including breakfast, lunch, reception and beers following. You even get a free event t-shirt! And you can come and go as you please, choosing just the sessions that interest you — though I would highly recommend hanging out all day for the networking, which is really the biggest benefit. You can do your own session if you and/or some colleagues have something to say (and if there’s still room). Hit the link that says MinneBarSessions, click Edit Page, and add your title and session description while you still can. In the coming days, the organizers will be cutting off new entries and publishing a full schedule with all the breakout sessions. That should then be available at the event site, or you can pick up a hard copy on your arrival. Come early — the event kicks off at 8:30 am.

Attention Startups and Angels: Note the "Lightning Talks" Session
On the MInneBarSessions page, scroll down and look for a link to apply to give a five-minute pitch.  Ideal if you’re a startup, whether just forming or further along. An entire hour is being devoted to these rapid-fire presentations. This is a great way to see what’s going on out there in our state, hear the latest business concepts and startup ideas, or get updates on the progress of local startups you may have already heard about. [This will be like the DEMO conferences I know so well. My advice: hone the message hard, and practice well!] Minnebar07crowd

This event is gonna be killer, I promise you. If you want to know what’s really goin’ on in tech in Minnesota, you have to be here. Bring lots of business cards, a camera, your laptop (we’ll have mondo wi-fi!), wear your favorite tee, and get ready to learn, share, network, gab, blog and Twitter your brains out, and meet tons of fun, like-minded people.

Hey, in my book, it definitely beats sittin’ on some cold lake fishing!  🙂

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