Our experience of performing at DEMO Fall 2010

DEMO is a conference dedicated to showcasing products from various companies and startups. Selected participants on the stage tell about their product and demonstrate it live. Moreover, it requires a live demonstration, and not a presentation in Powerpoint. A startup has 6 minutes in which it is very desirable to meet, but this is quite enough to tell about the product and show how it works. Thanks to the conference, startups are paying attention (or not paying) to both investors and other companies interested in cooperation.

We showed our Zingaya service, which allows you to place a widget on the site click-to-call to communicate with visitors, and now we want to share our experiences and thoughts about this event.
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(Warning! Under the cut there are pictures and video)


This time the conference was held in Santa Clara, one of the towns of the Silicon Valley. The weather was very good: sunshine, heat +25. The conference lasted 3 days and was held in the building of the Hyatt hotel. Photos from the hotel window and hall:




The first day was waiting for listening. Listening allows the DEMO team to set up equipment and understand what will happen on stage in general during your performance. It should be noted that the team knows its business, and everyone just has to do their job. Nobody’s going to dump technical problems on your shoulders, you just have to act as you see fit. During the audition, of course, an interesting case occurred: after I inserted the audio jack into the poppy, its screen went out and, until it became clear what the audio jack was to blame, several turbulent minutes passed in an attempt to understand what came from the "inserted" The laptop could cause such an effect. After the jack was taken out and inserted again, everything became normal (hello Apple!). Here are some pictures from listening:




We performed on the second day in the morning at the end of the first batch of speakers, at about 10 in the morning (when there were more people who were not sleepy, but did not even get tired of constantly listening to performances). Everything went very smoothly. The Internet did not let us down, our software also worked perfectly. During the presentation, we showed a call from the web page of an online store selling surfboards to the sales manager. The manager took the call on his mobile, sitting in the car near the hotel :) Here is a video of our speech:


The third day was devoted to services for social networks and awards. They handed over the audience award and assigned certain titles DEMOgod. We did not earn prizes, but our goal was not to win prizes (although it would be nice), but to show our service to the American audience. After the speeches, by the way, I had to go to the pavilion to my booth and show the product to anyone interested. Here is a photo of the stand:


What conclusions can be made about the conference:
1. If your product looks great when it is shown live (wow effect), then DEMO is the right place to show it.
2. If your financial capabilities are limited, it is better to look in the direction of Techcrunch Disrupt (it used to be called Techcrunch50). In addition to the fee for participation in the DEMO, there are still various items of expenditure, which at first you do not suspect. By the way, official DEMO prices are more than negotiable.
3. Despite promises about a staggering amount of press and coverage of the event wherever possible, everything was not very good with the press: there was little press and its work with speakers was not organized at all. Here DEMO nothing to boast. The main site for DEMO is the VentureBeat site. By a strange coincidence, Matt Marshall is the main organizer of DEMO and the CEO at VentureBeat. It looked more like DEMO is promoting itself.
4. Investors may really be interested in your technology and company, that is, they are watching this event. Not all, of course, but many. Therefore, it is advisable to visit DEMO not only for 3 days, but for a week or two (or even more), so that there is time to communicate with everyone.
5. Conferences help bring information about your product, make an official launch, but do not think that this is a panacea. This is just one way to state or remind yourself.

Some advertising:
Zingaya on the DEMO website
Zingaya service page

PS Everything is very difficult to describe at once, so if you have any questions, we will be happy to answer them in the comments.