Jeremiah Owyang discusses how web tools and social media enable companies to connect with customers

Understanding DEMO

I’ve never been, but hear quite a bit about this unique ’show’, it’s an opportunity for emerging and hopeful startups to show off their product to a large and captive audience in a creative non-traditional way.

DEMO: The Launchpad for Emerging Technology.

“DEMO is the premier launch venue for new products, technologies and companies. For more than 16 years, DEMO has established a reputation for identifying and presenting to an elite audience the products most likely to have a significant impact on the marketplace and market trends in the coming year. Each product is carefully screened and selected by DEMO’s Executive Producer, Chris Shipley, one of the top trend spotters in the personal technology product industry. DEMO is held two times a year; one in February, and one in September.” -Read About page

A Unique Way to Launch your Product, it’s a Show!
This next week in San Diego several companies will be taking the stage, the process is different than any expo as here’s the challenge, it’s a like a show.

“…DEMO would be about the products; would require timed, live demonstrations; and would not allow PowerPoint presentations! These rules still stand and, in recognition of the difficulty of communicating the power and value of emerging technologies on stage in a short 360 seconds, DEMO producers honor outstanding presentations by selecting DEMOgods…” More about Demo gods, and some previous ‘winners’

The official DEMO organizers have provided some tips to those who are presenting. Interesting followup suggestions here. Perhaps the best thing to do is to hire a consultant who specializes in this unique presentation. Shel Israel has quite a bit of experience with this, I’d recomend talking to him if you’re going to present, here he is with his Blogging Partner Robert and client Carlos.

I wanted to wish CEO Carlos Garcia a successful presentation. I’ve had a sneak screenshots and some time to play with his product Scrapblog and suspect it’s a unique product for a wide audience. It could be a network publishing platform if deployed and positioned correctly. He’s recently launched a blog which will chronicle his journey. A podcast recording of Scoble’s review of Scrapblog is on TalkCrunch (26:16 minutes into the podcast).

I know this is cheesy, but DEMO reminds me of that song by Eminem, Lose Yourself. Carlos please hold your spaghetti.

What other companies are presenting at DEMO? It’s not listed on the site, (although the schedule says it was supposed to announnce on Sept 22) I’m curious to know. (Techcrunch lists some companies from Feb 07 to watch)

4 Comments so far

  1. Brian Solis September 24th, 2006 6:01 pm

    Hey Jeremiah, I’m down in SD and will be reporting live from the show - well as time allows!

    Here’s the first post along with a list of presenters.

    Also, note the new address…either www.briansolis.com or www.pr2point0.com will work.

    Let me know if there’s anything you want me to check out for you while I’m down here.

    http://www.briansolis.com/2006/09/live-from-demofall-2006-924.html

  2. […] Related links: Socialtwister 2.0, Squash, Web Strategy, The Jason Calacanis Weblog and digg GigaOm, Michael Arrington, Om Malik, Robert Scoble, ScobleShow, TalkCrunch, TechCrunch […]

  3. Jim Forbes September 24th, 2006 7:57 pm

    I’ll be posting throught the show in real time
    My name is Jim Forbes and I was a Demo producer until I had a stroke and retired. i still maintain strong ties to Chris and others and have a good idea of what makes a good presentation.
    I did14 Demo events and wrote/edited DemoLetter and its predecesssor, PC Letter.

    Regards
    jim Forbes

  4. jeremiah_owyang September 25th, 2006 12:06 am

    Brian, Love to read your thoughts on the show. Thanks so much for the comment.

    Jim, I guess we have YOU to thank for this wonderful event, I do hope you take it easy and stay with us for a very long time!

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