So you shoot crappy videos, too, huh? Okay, then does MotionDSP, another of the first session’s presenters, have a deal for you: FixMyMovie.com. It dramatically improves videos you upload from your phone, your digital camera, or your webcam. It’s based on patent-pending military technology — so, it makes sense that one of their investors is InQTel (as in CIA). The company’s raised less than $1 million, but already has more than $1 million in revs. The demo of their new consumer service was extremely impressive — the technology increases resolution, reduces noise, and corrects color and lighting, said CEO Sean Varah. "It’s one click to enhance."
Tag: DEMOfall 07 (Page 3 of 3)
Well, what a cool beginning — Digital Fountain, the first presenter, uses some cool surf videos shot in Hawaii to show off its new Splash content delivery. I was lovin’ it. Though it won’t be available till January, it sure sounds great. 
It will deliver entertainment-grade video over any network, eliminating common problems like poor video quality, small picture size, slow loads, and frequent buffering. Splash uses Amazon Web Services to "deliver a low-cost, extraordinary consumer experience," said CEO Charlie Oppenheimer
The Bayview Lawn at the Sheraton San Diego Hotel & Marina was buzzing bigtime starting at 6:00 last evening to kick off DEMOfall 2007. Georgeous weather, sumptuous food, great friends, new people from all over the place, and tech talk flying in every direction. Does it get any better than this? I was so busy meeting new people and getting pitched, I didn’t even have a chance to shoot many photos. 
Okay, one decent shot, and here it is: (from left) Marc Orchant, newly of Blognation…Aaron Fulkerson, cofounder of Mindtouch (who just who strolled over from his offices)…Shel Israel of Global Neighbourhoods…and Luis Villalobos, founder of Tech Coast Angels. [Man, I love the mixes I can put together at these events!] But if you want to see more photos, just check out these from Brian Solis, who does much better than I ever could. (Brian, you da man.)
But what new stuff did I hear about at the party that I like? Well, for starters, Naomi Wall, content dev chief at MetaRADAR, told me they’ll be introducing a "media masher" that brings all your rich media content together, bridging the gap between websites, desktop apps, and mobil devices. And I also was glad to run into the guys from mSpoke in Pittsburgh (yes, some of those smart Carnegie Mellon dudes) — Sean Ammirati, VP biz dev (a colleague from Read/Write Web, who I’d only met online up till now), and Dave Mawhinney, CEO. They’re launching FeedHub, a whiz-bang new technology to help with your RSS information overload. We’re talking a personalization engine that dynamically adapts to your reading habits. This is a space I’ve been following, and I just knew we’d be seeing some solutions to this problem soon. Bring it on, baby. A bloke from Manchester, UK, told me about YuuGuu, which lets you instantly share your screen in real-time with anyone, anywhere. Blimey, dude! The founder of LongJump told me about his firm’s online catalog of apps for small business, which can be customized via drag-and-drop. Then, lo and behold, I met a storage startup! Fusion-io of Salt Lake City I learned will be introducing a revolutionary stroage architecture that puts SAN or NAS on silicon (high-density NAND), with access rates comparable to DRAM with the storage capacity of disk. DEMO says it "may prove to be among the most important products ever to launch" at their events. Yikes! Then, on the way back into the hotel bar [yes, the party continued inside, till God’s knows when], I ran into the the founder of iForem, which has a subscription-free service to store,protect and share intellectual property — an online safe deposit box for businesses and consumers, with a trust account. And then the folks from ideablob (site to
go live later this morning) caught me — we were the last ones on the lawn! — and told me their new venture is funded by
Advanta in Philly [how do all the PA startups find me?] This site is an open
community for small businesses, where members vote on new ideas and get
valuable advice and feedback from one another. And get this: you can
actually win cash for your idea.
As the evening continued, I had a great chat with my longtime buddies Steve Larsen of Krugle and Shel Israel of Global Neighbourhoods, solving all the world’s problems. Then, it was beddy-bye time so I could get up early and write this post. More soon!
Summer’s usually not a big time for me to be blogging from tech conferences, but I decided I had to get to Ad:Tech Chicago, July 31 – August 1, because nothing beats hot, old sweaty downtown Chicago in the summertime. 
No, seriously, I’m getting soo into ad technology and widget technology these days, how could I miss it? And I actually love being on Lake Michigan — literally! It’s being held in the Navy Pier conference center. Lots of good speakers and exhibitors at this one that I want to hear from. Please, definitely look me up if you’re there and think you have something disruptive in the world of advertising and marketing that we should all know about.
The next day, I’m back in Minneapolis for a local gig, put on by The Collaborative. It’s called Summer Venture Camp, and it should draw a couple hundred of us crazy tech startup Minnesotans looking to rule the world from the Land of 10,000 Lakes (one of which I’m sitting next to right now, and about to dive in). 
I’ll see a lot of my friends and clients at this one….including a bunch of you in my GetGoMN network, I hope!
Then, come September, I’m stoked about being able to blog from my favorite conference of ’em all, another one of the famed DEMO events — this one DEMOfall ’07”,
in my favorite other place in the world, San Diego. 
Looking forward to seeing many of my media and blogger friends at this one — and, yes, I know a lot of you VCs colleagues will be lurking about, too… 🙂 Nothing beats hearing some 70 startups, many heretofore in stealth mode, pitch their new wares. DEMO rocks! And you’ll read all about it again right here, o faithful readers….
Not sure where I might be venturing off to in October but, in November, I just have to blog from the Defrag Conference in Denver. It’s being run by, among others, my old buddy Eric Norlin, with sponsors including the Rocky Mountain Venture Capital Association and Colorado’s CTEK organization. 
Guys like Brad Feld, VC extraordinaire in Boulder, are involved, too. I just gotta find out more about the the brand of startup mojo those guys have going’ there — it’s awesome! And how can you miss an event with a sales pitch like this:
“Defrag is the first conference focused solely on the internet-based tools that transform loads of information into layers of knowledge, and accelerate the ‘aha’ moment. Defrag is about the space that lives in between knowledge management, social networking, collaboration and business intelligence. Defrag is not a version number. Rather it’s a gathering place for the growing community of implementers, users, builders and thinkers that are working on the next wave of software innovation.”
Hurry up and register for this one. The buzz is building, and they only have room for 300 — which is a great size for an event. You can get to know people a lot better in a group of this size, and there will be mucho heavies in attendance here.
What events are on your radar in the next few months? Tell me in the comments….
Written from the shores of the Whitefish
Chain, north of Brainerd, Minnesota.
About Graeme
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