DEMO 09 launched this morning with Executive Producer Chris Shipley referring to 2009 and its downward spiraling economy as a “reset year.” Shipley didn’t shy away from the effect this economy is having on tech overall and the on the DEMO show itself, as she acknowledged the smaller size of this year’s show.
Shipley, though, referred to herself as a glass-half-full type of person and said that there are still plenty of opportunities for smart and innovative companies.
This show is also the penultimate show for Shipley, who is stepping down after DEMOFall 09 and handing the executive producer position to Matt Marshall.
Of course, people don’t go to DEMO to listen to inside baseball stuff about who is running it, they go to see new companies and new products launched.
The morning session of this year’s DEMO definitely got off to a slow start. Not too many of the initial presenters were showing products that made me sit forward in my seat and get excited. Still, some showed a bit of promise.
Transformyx RallyPoint is a product from a Louisiana company that experienced the damage of Hurrican Katrina first-hand. RallyPoint uses a mix of management technologies to help businesses impacted by disaster and other major events manage their personnel and projects as people become displaced from central corporate offices.
Cc:betty is a simple Web-based application that takes any e-mail conversation and creates a Web space that centralizes all content associated with that e-mail thread, whether it’s images, videos, links or documents. Also, I liked that when former PC Weeker Shipley introduced the company she acknowledged that the first thought she had (which I also had) when she heard of the company was of legendary PC Week receptionist Betty Edwards.
While Citrix is hardly a new company, one of the more useful looking products of the morning session was its new GoView service. GoView makes it simple to record any Windows-based application session, record a voice over and post it online for sharing with co-workers and clients. The app definitely had a lower learning curve then full featured apps such as Adobe Captivate and, at least while it is in beta, it is free.