Lots of video stuff here at DEMO. Eyejot is the first and is about “video messaging in a blink.” It uses Flash and is client free. It works with any web browser, including mobile phones. Here’s a screen shot from the demo, showing a message David Geller, CEO, quickly created before our eyes. And it has business applications, too, he said. 
Tag: DEMO 07 (Page 3 of 4)
Chris Shipley is giving her introduction right now. There’s an exciting shift going on in IT, she says. Tech is no longer the central focus. “We’re deeply into the age of Age of the Power of the Individual.” 
We have the power to choose the technologies we use and how we use them. “We’re all becoming designers and producers. We’re ‘creating consumers’,” Shipley says. It’s not just about consumer applications, however — personal preferences of enterprise buyers drive their IT choices, too. And the 68 companies here exemplify both areas, she says. “One person’s office app is another’s home-based business app in the making.”
The first demo presenter was the Kauffman Innovation Network, showing its new iBridge network, which is designed to help universities get their technologies off the shelves so they can be commercialized.
[UPDATE: I must apologize for blanking on Hany Nada’s name the other night. These receptions can do that to one… š He didn’t have his name badge on, and being a visual person, guess it didn’t get filed away in my semi-solid-state memory. Hany’s the former Piper Jaffray Minneapolis guy I mentioned, and is now Managing Director of Granite Global Ventures in Menlo Park. Also ran into yet another former Twin Cities dude (during the sessions on Wednesday) who worked with Hany at Piper: Charles Beeler, General Partner at Eldorado Ventures in Menlo Park. It’s like a Minnesota reunion!]
The DEMO 07 conference kicked off at 6:00 pm Tuesday with about 700 people crowding into an indoor reception in the beautiful Desert Springs JW Marriott Resort lobby. It had been scheduled to be outdoors, but the weather was a bit cool, shall we say? And it had actually been raining lightly when most people were arriving in the late afternoon. So much for the warm, sunny California desert… š Thought I’d post some random shots as I wandered about schmoozing. Coolest thing was I ran into a lot of former Minnesota people! It was like old-home week…
A view of the very crowded lobby area. The rest of the guests must have been really ticked that this mob took over the place! (Especially at the rates they’re paying.) It was really hard to move around, so creative ways had to be used to work the crowd. The key: strategically timed perimeter moves!
Robert Scoble from PodTech (and of course his own Scobleizer blog) was in the middle of things with his now ever-present video camera. That’s Stewart Alsop at the right, the original founder of the DEMO conference, which has quite a history: this is the 17th annual winter DEMO, and the 25th DEMO conference, since a fall event was added in 1999. Chris Shipley, who’s been the producer for many years, was just off to the right, but I wasn’t able to get a shot of her. (Plenty of opportunities to shoot some on stage.)
John Furrier (right), the founder and CEO of pioneering new media firm PodTech, which cosponsored the great Bloghaus at CES. He’s with Brian Solis, founder of social-media PR agency FutureWorks, which has offices in Silicon Valley and Orange County and is working with many hot, new startups.
Here’s where the Minnesota people start showing up. Charles Wilson (left), longtime Internet guru who started his career in the Twin Cities, working with such success stories as the Allaire brothers, and now consulting with DEMO presenter Mission Research…Steve Larsen, now spending most of his time in Menlo Park as CEO of Krugle, a hot site for tech geeks (Scoble says Microsoft should buy Krugle to solve its search woes!)…and Shel Israel (not from MN), co-author with Scoble of “Naked Conversations”, who’s so popular, I couldn’t get him to stay still enough to pose for this shot! He’s also known as a coach of many successful DEMO presenting firms.
Steve Larsen with Christine Herron, director of investments at the Omidyar Network, which I learned was his first investor at Krugle. She’s also on the board of advisors at Mission Research, the DEMO presenter mentioned above.
Another shot of the (former) Minnesota folks: Charles Wilson again at left…joined by Beth Temple, now CMO at DEMO presenter Magnify.net in NYC…Shel Israel (we let him stay even though he’s not from MN!)…a guy whose name I didn’t quite get, who was with Piper Jaffray in Minneapolis until he moved to the Bay Area eight years ago…and Steve Larsen at right.
Finally, I snapped a pic of David Goldfarb, CTO of Vringo, and his colleague Benjamin Levy, VP of Marketing — here to present their new video ringtone technology. I told them they have the coolest looking business cards and web site I’ve seen so far.
Afterwards, it was off to dinner with Steve Larsen, Beth Temple, Charles Wilson, Shel Israel, and four of the good folks from Mission Research, known for its “GiftWorks” fundraising software, and here to introduce its new “SalesWorks” solution for small and SOHO businesses.
Well, it’s 24 hours and counting till the opening of DEMO ’07 tomorrow morning, and the bits are flying. (By the way, here’s the event schedule.) The blogs are lighting up, traffic tripled to yours truly yesterday, and the pre-announcement news releases are starting to hit my in-box. The first was from BUZ Interactive, which has designed a way to send personalized voicemails, mixed with music, to any mobile phone on the planet without having the phone ring. More news just arrived from ThePort.com, which has gone live with the download for its Blerts desktop RSS alerter (Windows only for now). [A quirk about some of the companies on the alphabetical DEMO presenters list — their service or product name is not what they’re listed under, so don’t look under “B”.]
Over at TechCrunch, I’m not surprised to see a post on Splashcast, a cool new Flash player to embed your channels on a website, since it’s where TechCrunch contributor Marshall Kirkpatrick has been working. (Though he, of course, did not write this post — Nick Gonzalez did.) Turns out Marshall has been blogging at the SplashCast web site for some time.
Meanwhile, Pete Cashmore at Mashable did a great post last night called Social Networking at DEMO – Standards Higher than Usual? It’s an excellent rundown of what we can expect in this category over the next two days at the conference.
Who will win the coveted DEMOgod awards? That we’ll learn at the closing media-panel dinner on Thursday evening. The panel will be moderated by Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal, and will include Victoria Barret, associate editor of Forbes, Larry Magid, tech columnist and CBS News contributor, and Laetitia Mailhes, correspondent for Les Ćchos. For some insight into the DEMOgod phenomenon, check out a blog post from my old Conferenza colleague, Gary Bolles, about the recent Churchill Club event in San Francisco. I also note that Conferenza is now running some breathless blogging by Sam Perry out in chilly NYC at the AlwaysOn Media conference, which overlaps with DEMO.
More from the desert soon….
Here’s something better than just a list of presenting companies at DEMO ’07, which I posted the other day. Below is a list with a few words on what each of these companies actually does…or what they’ll be introducing at the event, which starts Tuesday evening in Palm Desert, CA. 
Note some of these mostly brand-new, hand.pngcked firms are remaining “stealth” right up to the end (but surprisingly not that many). What is surprising is that a few have no web sites at all! [We can only hope they might activate a site once the conference actually begins? š … ] Also note there are five big-name firms using DEMO to introduce something new as well, but I didn’t have time to drill into their massive web sites to see that that might be. Nonetheless, here’s everything else, and I must say some exciting stuff is due to be unveiled. (If you’d rather view this list with live links to each company’s site, here’s a quick web page I put up. It’s all public info — I just aggregated it so I can see everything in one place to plan my coverage.)
The DEMO 07 Presenting Companies and What They’re About
6th Sense Analytics, Inc. – Morrisville, NC – www.6sa.com – SaaS analytics for sw dev teams
Adobe Systems, Inc. – San Jose, CA – www.adobe.comĀ – ??
Aggregate Knowledge – San Mateo, CA – www.aggregateknowledge.com – content recommendation engine
Alcatel-Lucent Ventures – Murray Hill, NJ – www.alcatelālucent.comĀ -??
Attendio, Inc. – San Francisco, CA – www.attendio.comĀ – still stealth (angel investors, Sunbridge Partners)
Bling Software, Inc. – Pleasanton, CA – www.blingsoftware.com – Ajax-based player for mobile Apps
blinkx, Inc. – San Francisco, CA – www.blinkx.com – video search
BooRah, Inc. – Palo Alto, CA – www.boorah.com – restaurant reviews (SF area only for now)
Boston-Power, Inc. – Westborough, MA – www.boston-power.comĀ – WEB SITE NOT FOUND (hello?)
Brevient Technologies, Inc. – Milwaukee, WI – www.jyngle.com – mobile messaging for groups
BUZ Interactive – Palo Alto, CA – www.buzinteractive.com – mobile personalization
Ceelox, Inc. – Tampa, FL – www.ceelox.com – biometric security software, incl for web site access
CircleUp, Inc. – Newport Beach, CA – www.circleup.com – online tool for community information-gathering
ClipSyndicate, a service of Critical Mention – NYC – www.clipsyndicate.com – news clips for web sites
DARTdevices Corp. – Mountain View, CA – www.dartdevices.com – middleware for device integration
DesignIn, Inc. – Marblehead, MA – URL unavailable – (no URL, hello?)
Devicescape Software, Inc. – San Bruno, CA – www.devicescape.com – connects devices to wi-fi w/o browser
eJamming, Inc. – Valley Village, CA – www.ejamming.comĀ – jam with other musicians online, in real time
Eyejot, Inc. – Seattle, WA – www.eyejot.com – still stealth to the end
GoWare, Inc. – Gilbert, AZ – www.goware.biz – access your PC data through your mobile phone
Helium, Inc. – Andover, MA – www.helium.com – user-created online reference resource, peer-reviewed
Inilex, Inc. – Chandler, AZ – www.inilex.com – platform to track assets like cars via phone or email
ink2 Corporation – Emeryville, CA – www.ink2.com – WEB SITE NOT FOUND (hello?)
Integrien Corp. – Irvine, CA – www.integrien.com – predicts enterprise app slowdowns and outages
iqzone, inc. – Scottsdale, AZ – www.iqzone.comĀ – “snap, send, sell” (otherwise stealth)
Iwerx, LLC – Mt.Dora, FL – www.iwerx.com – WEB SITE NOT FOUND (hello?)
Jaman.com, Inc. – Palo Alto, CA – www.jaman.com – global online community for cinephiles
Kauffman Innovation Network – Kansas City, MO – www.iBridgeNetwork.org – online forum, research/innov
LiveSquare.comĀ – Gilbert, AZ – www.livesquare.com – anti.pngracy technology for streaming media
Magnify.net – New York, NY – www.Magnify.net – video publishing platform, integrates UG video into websites
Me.dium, Inc. – Boulder, CO – www.me.dium.com – reveals hidden world of people/activity behind browser
Mission Research – Lancaster, PA – www.missionresearch.com – “Giftworks” fundraising software
Mixpo Portfolio Broadcasting – Seattle, WA – www.mixpo.com – broadcasts videos/photos/music to the web
Mobio Networks – Cupertino, CA – www.getmobio.com – mobile content & apps that are fun, simple, everyday
My Currency Co. – San Francisco, CA – www.my-currency.com – community site for real estate, investment
Nexo Systems, Inc. – Palo Alto, CA – www.nexo.com – free web sites for online groups
Nextumi – Dublin, OH – www.nextumi.com – sharing layer that connects cell/IM/MySpace/Facebook/email
Nuvoiz, Inc. – Mountain View, CA – www.nuvoiz.com – software to expand usage of VoIP over Wi-Fi
OurStory – Mountain View, CA – www.ourstory.com – capture, share, and preserve stories about your life
PairUp, Inc. – San Francisco, CA – www.pairup.com – “the business trip, reinvented” (no more info)
Panjea.com – Los Angeles, CA – www.panjea.com – social media network with marketplace for members
Preclick Corp. – Atlantic Highlands, NJ – www.preclick.com – simple software for organizing & editing photos
QTech, Inc. – Hyderabad, AP, India – www.qtechinc.com – tools for mobile phones to jog your memory
Reveal Technology – Palo Alto, CA www.revealtechnology.com – trusted enterprise P2P network software
SailPoint Technologies – Austin, TX – www.sailpoint.com – enterprise software for identity mgmt/compliance
Seagate Technology – Scotts Valley, CA – www.seagate.com – ??
Serendipity Technologies – Yakum, Israel – www.serendipityātech.com – WEB SITE NOT FOUND (hello?)
SharedBook, Inc. – New York, NY – www.sharedbook.com – reverse publishing platform (online to offline)
Shipwire.com – Los Angeles, CA – www.shipwire.com – automated, low-cost order fulfillment
SOASTA – Mountain View, CA – www.soasta.com – sw for testing, certification of web services & web apps
SplashCast – Portland, OR – www.splashcastmedia.com – Marshall Kirkpatrick’s media syndication service
SupportSoft, Inc. – Redwood City, CA – www.supportsoft.com – automated software support for consumers
Symantec Corp. – Cupertino, CA – www.symantec.com – ??
TeleFlip – Santa Monica, CA – www.teleflip.com – send messages from PCs to cell phone with no software
TextDigger, Inc. – San Jose, CA – www.textdigger.com – AI software for advanced information retrieval
ThePort Network – Atlanta, GA – www.theport.com – solution for creating, administering online communities
Thunk – San Francisco, CA – www.honeypitch.com – proposal automation solution w/CRM, productivity tools
Total Immersion – Suresnes, France – www.t-immersion.com – augmented reality software (returnee from ā04)
Trailfire, Inc. – Seattle, WA – www.trailfire.com – hosted service to let anyone comment on any web page
Triumfant, Inc. – Research Triangle Park, NC – www.triumfant.com – automated resolution management
Vringo, Inc. – Beit Shemesh, Israel – www.vringo.com – community for sharing video ringtones
VUVOX Network – Redwood City, CA – www.vuvox.com – personal, emotive expressions on your media
WHISHER.COM – Barcelona, Spain – www.whisher.com – “Wi-fi reloaded” (otherwise stealth)
Wyse Technology, Inc. – San Jose, CA – www.wyse.com – ??
Yodio, Inc. – Bellevue, WA – www.yodio.com – personal audio publishing for “fun, fame, and fortune”
ZINK Imaging, LLC – Waltham, MA – www.zink.com – still stealth to the end
Zoho / AdventNet – Pleasanton, CA – www.zoho.com – CRM & office productivity apps, incl ZohoWriter
ZoomInfo – Waltham, MA – www.zoominfo.com – search engine to discover people, companies, relationships
I have my list of favorites to check out. Which ones are you most interested in, and why?
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