Yesterday me and Hagit Katzenelson our VP of Marketing, presented at DEMOfall 2006. It’s definitely the most serious and high impact conference I attended so far.
Every company had 6 minutes to demonstrate its product in front of a huge audience consisting primarily of the most influential journalists in the consumer tech industry.
Fitting product demos (and moreso web based services) into a 6 minute demo is a tough job, and we, like the other companies that demoed prepared for this event for weeks. Those of us who presented at DEMO for the first time will definitely remember it as a one in a lifetime experience. DEMO is very different. Companies presenting go in one after the other, with only 30 seconds introduction by Chris Shipley separating between the presentations. The green room is where you spend the last few minutes before going up to present on stage, and the last opportunity to rehearse the script. It’s pretty stressful, and yet I found it really amusing to watch the presenters (including me) totally concentrated, walking back and forth in the very small green room rehearsing the script out-loud, including hand gestures and face impression.
Renee Blodgett, who’s done 15 DEMOs by now, helped us on the PR and communications front and did a superb job in preparing us and taking us through this event successfully. We were really fortunate that she introduced us to Buzz Bruggeman who reviewed our script and gave us a few but very valuable speaking and presentation tips. We were later told that Buzz was by far the most professional DEMO Demonstrator.
We’re getting great coverage from this conference. Here’s the first piece by Dan Farber. Oh yes, and we made into the USA Today coverage. Hurrah
Here are a few pictures from the pavilion, and the demo itself:
