March 02, 2009, 6:32 PM — Demo '09: The Launchpad for Emerging Technology is going on as I write this (it runs March 1-3rd this year). I was watching the demos taking place today, thinking I'd see something great to tell my readers about. And as I was trying to pick from the many presentations I saw, I realized something. It was the technology behind Demo '09 itself that was of most interest to me.
I'm not in Palm Desert, CA (where Demo 09 is taking place). I'm in my home office "enjoying" the March storm that is blanketing much of the East Coast under far too many inches of snow. And yet I'm watching the demos being streamed live. That's nothing special, really, but what makes the experience interesting is that I'm gauging the crowd reaction to the demos via the Facebook Live widget the accompanies the feed. If you're logged into Facebook while on the feed page, you can chat with other viewers. Or, logged in or not, just lurk and see what folks have to say. There've been some pretty astute observations flowing through the widget today. Lastly, there's a Twitter feed on the page picking up Tweets with the hashtag #demo09, but sadly this doesn't offer a lot of value since the signal to noise ratio is so low.
Watching the presentations live has been a pretty compelling experience, particularly when a demo goes really well or really poorly and I was getting the real time feedback of the audience. Now I won't say this is as good as being at the conference because we remote viewers don't get to walk the show floor. But for the on-stage presentations, it really does seem just as good. Maybe better, since the internet connection at home is apparently better than on the show floor!
Day 3 of Demo09 is yet to come, and you can tune in tomorrow at http://www.demo.com/live to see what I'm talking about. It really is worth a look. I hope more conferences broadcast content like this.
Demo 09 on the web: live video on the left, lively conversation on the right. It's just like being there!
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