johnwilker.com

Hung out with 20 of Colorado’s most innovative companies yesterday.

I was at DEMOgala ‘08 ALL day yesterday.

It was fun. Tiring but fun. It’s funny how I can do a 3-4 conference, set it up all that, and not be as beat as setting up a single booth, LOL. Man New respect for expo sponsors!

Our booth was pretty sweet! Check out my write up on that, over here.

I got to hang with my pals from Brightkite, which is always fun!

Rob from EventVue showed up, and we chatted some more about some cool changes they’re making over there, that will totally rock for event organizers!

The first among them, is that EventVue is free now. They used to charge by attendee, but decided that model wasn’t very good for them or organizers. The new model they’re working on will kick ass, and I can’t wait to get it going for 360|Flex, heck probably even Ignite Denver!

In the meantime, they’re free like the wind! So if you’re organizing an event, go check ‘em out! Tell ‘em John sent ya. It don’t do anything for either of us, but makes me feel important :D

They had about 1,000 people in attendance at DEMOgala which I believe was a new record. They also had a lot more Silicon Valley folks come in to chat.

I didn’t attend many sessions, but the two I did, were very good!

Giving the Individual a global voice – A panel with socialThing, BazaarVoice, The Funded, and Fuser. It was great to get their take on giving people a voice. It was also interesting to see two opposite models work. In online reviews, anonymity == less trust. However for thefunded, anonymity is the only way to get the truth, because of the possible repurcussions of speaking the truth. Very interesting. Bazaarvoice sounds very cool, if I sold something, I’d want them involved!

Did I mention there was a robot?

I think they were CO School of Mines, but there were some kids there with some really kick ass robots. One would zip around an pick up swim tubes and stuff. It trapped me in the bathroom hallway for a minute or so, but I won’t hold a grudge.

Over all I was very impressed with the DEMOgala event. It had a few rough spots, booths being moved the day of set up, stuff like that, but otherwise a kick ass event, that really showed off the cool tech Colorado has going for it!

I have a much bigger list of potential speakers and sponsors now for Ignite Denver :D