Just came back from Demo 2009 in San Diego. Looking back, just seems like Lots of cool companies were there. And I could not help notice how well organized everything was. I think the Demo crew is just amazing. Chris Shipley seemed to so comfortable in her role, her sense of humor just adding a special touch to the whole event. And I guess for old timers and her it probably was a little bit more special. For me personally, the conference started on a great note. Monday evening after the setup, we had a welcome reception. Weather was great, location perfect, and a lot of enthusiastic enterpreneurs around. I got a chance to talk to several of enterpreneurs and listened to their story. All of them had two things in common – abundant optimism and passion. It was almost a religious experience for me – the experience was more than what I hearing and seeing, and probably a bit hard to describe.

Overall, I liked the format of the conference, demo pavillions were closed when the pitches were going on. That way I could man the booth, and still not miss rest of the conference. Plus they added a new program called – alpha pitch, and we definitely benefitted from the chance given to companies who are not quite ready for a launch. It was great to mingle with other startups in the same stage. Folks from Pinyadda were our neighbours and it was fun manning the booth, demoing the product, answering questions, getting feedback, and I am sure I picked up a lot more just being there.

Here is me pitching Nubli early in the morning!

On my way back, I was a little bit impressed and a whole lot pumped up. Another thing that the conference did was to make things clearer for me, from a business perspective. Two pieces that stuck in my mind — a quote from Mark Pincus – its probably equally hard to create a small company as a large company (i guess by large he meant one going after a large market), so why not just think big. And another was stories from recipients of “life time achievement awards” or as Chris Shipley and the recipients put it “midlife” achievement awards. Almost all of what they said validated what pushed me to start this journey, to take on a problem, and try to make a contribution in my small way.