Demo@15

Of all the many conferences I attend each year, my favorite is Demo. Many conferences offer insight in various ways. All conferences offer a chance to network with friends and colleagues from the industry. Only Demo offers the chance to meet with the top couple of people from dozens of technology companies, see their product in action, and discuss their plans and strategies with them. The conference is attended by analysts, consultants, editors, venture capitalists, and entrepreneurs. This year was special because it was the fifteenth year of Demo. There were several people there who had attended fourteen of the fifteen (I have been to thirteen of them). There were 73 companies showing off their new offerings.

Various stories have appeared in the media about Demo this week and news about the conference will reach 250 million people around the world via print and online media.
Chris Shipley is the Executive Producer for DEMO Conferences and she always opens the conference with her vision of where things are headed and what technologies will have the biggest impact. Half or so of the companies get six minutes to tell their story and do their demo on stage — others get one minute. During half of the morning and half of the afternoon, the 750 attendees get to mingle at the company booths. Needless to say, a lot of networking occurs and much of it leads to new relationships and in some cases financing.

Chris says that she gets to be like a kid in a candy store – she looks at more than a thousand companies in order to select the ones that present at Demo. At breaks, colleagues always ask each other "see anything you like?". I always do. It is hard to summarize the excitement I felt for what I saw. I’ll highlight a few things I saw but you can see a one page summary and link for each company on the list of demonstrators. (read more)