iPioneer: Mark Johnson's Blog

Kosmix Wins a DemoGod Award!

  Mark the Kosmix DEMO God 
  Originally uploaded by miss_rogue.

Out of 700 companies, 70 are selected for Demo.  Then, only 10 ouft of those 70 are selected at DemoGods for giving the most compelling product demonstrations.  Kosmix was fortunate enough to be the recipient of the award, thanks to an amazing performance by Venky and Anand.  By the time of the awards dinner, they were both on planes home after three grueling days, so I had to go up on stage to collect the glory.  I even got a hug from Chris Shipley!  Congrats to the other DemoGods including: Riya, SproutIT Systems, Krugle, iodum, Network Streaming Inc., Panaratio Database Images, VSee Labs, Ugobe, and FrontPorch Inc.

Yay us!  (Note the little Koala bear on my badge, compliments of Mick)

Technorati tags: DemoGod, Demo

                                                                                                   

Mark's Demo Picks

Of course, I think that Kosmix is the coolest and deepest technology at Demo, but I thought I'd pick my other top choices.  I'm only rating these guys on their demos, not necessarily how much I like their stuff.

The Winner

Riya - their demo was my only "oh my god!" moment at Demo.  The facial and text recognition in photos is not only amazing technology, it's extremely useful in trying to sort through hundreds of photos.  I love seeing strong technology with a great user proposition.

Honorable Mentions

MooBella - their ice cream was ok, but the demo was awesome.  A Linux-based ice cream machine? Crazy!

myPeople - no dial tones.  Cool!  Also, I love the friendly voice that asks whom you're dialing (though I wish he were more gramatically correct)

LocaModa - I have no idea what kind of use this technology will have, but I love the idea of bringing the Web out to the greater world.  And it's cool to SMS their stuff!

We'll see who actually wins.

Demo Underground Nightlife

I love going to parties at conferences.  When you're on the show floor or doing a presentation, it's always quid pro quo: get the reporters so they'll write about us!  Can company xyz partner with us?  Do you want to buy our product?  If you the answer is "no," it's onto the next person.  Parties are a great chance to connect with people on a personal level.  Behind all of the business at a conference, there are real people with unique talents--especially at a tech conference.  And, when you connect with people on a personal level, you can often get more (and better) work done.

The Demo Jam Session is a yearly event in which Demo participants form a jam band.  Even someone as famous as Don Clark, of the Wall Street Journal, was playing guitar (that man can play a mean guitar solo!).  While bopping to the beats, I met a great Australian from Zingee, who lived up to his Down-Under reputation as a hard-chargin' partier.  There was a fun after-hours party at the hotel bar with the hardcore folks.  But, best of all, I ended the night with three amazing individuals.  Through a process of random drunken selection, we ended up in Greg's hotel room and had a wide-randing conversation for several hours.  We talked about Plato's allegory of the cave, gender roles in modern society, and shared fascinating personal stories. No "I'm feeling lucky" technology could have put us together: there's still plenty of room in this world for capturing the beauty of serendipity.  I my collective conversation with Greg, Tara, and Allen is only just beginning!

Demo Day 3: The Morning Demos

Day 2 at Demo!

Me and Chris Shipley

I've been a big Chris Shipley fan ever since I was an Account Coordinator at Blanc & Otus.  I got this picture towards the end of Demo.  I was a little bit red-faced, because I was embarassed to meet her and my colleagues decided to inform her of my trepidation.  Oh well!

 

Technorati Tags: Demo, Chris Shipley

Demo 2006, Day 2: General Session

The afternoon Demo session. 

Demo, Day 2: The Sweet Sixteen

Another report from Demo 2006!  I won't be able to see all of the demos, since I need to man the Kosmix booth with Michele, but I'll try to get as many down as possible.

Demo, Day 1

I don't have too much to report from the first day of Demo 2006, because I'm bushed from staying up late making sure Kosmix was working properly.  I arrived here around 4:00 MST dying to check my e-mail; but the Wayport network at the resort had ground to a halt, probably because they're not used to servicing a couple hundred bandwidth-hungry geeks.  Eventually, I got enough of the pipe to check the site and write a blog post, but the network is still spotty and slow.

The only Demo event tonight was the Welcome Reception.  I met a couple of interesting people, though I only have time for an elevator pitch right now:

• Zingee - an Australian-based company, who claims they've traveled the furthest to get to Demo.  They allow you to share files from your computer, without any uploads.  A neat way to preserve your privacy!
• SimpleFeed - they're trying to help companies commercialize RSS feeds.  They have all sorts of neat features, like the ability to customize the look-and-feel of feeds, making feeds look nice (instead of those nasty XML screens), advanced per-user tracking, and more.
• RawSugar - I definitely need to look into these folks more.  They do tagging, but they were also telling me how you can use your tags to set up some kind of taxonomy/directory.  As someone who is interested in the connection between folksonomies and taxonomies. . .
• Panoratio - a spin off from Siemens research (das alles ist Deutschland!), these guys claim that they can get lossless compression up to 1:1000.  Of course, only with limited data sets, but they said they're gonna compress 30GB of data on a laptop with 256MB of memory.  I want to see that demo!

Most exciting was that I was interviewed for a PodCast by John Furrier at PodTech.net.  I'll let y'all know as soon as it comes out!