http://online.wsj.com/article_print/0,,SB110954583959165320,00.html
The Wall Street Journal
February 28, 2005
PORTALS
By LEE GOMES
Tale of 2 Conferences:
High-Tech Innovation
Comes in Many Guises
February 28, 2005
Through an unusual alignment of the planets, two conferences that featured
aspiring innovator-entrepreneurs eager to take the world by storm had their
start on the same weekend this month.
Both gatherings lasted three days; both featured speakers getting up on
stage and describing a new product, usually a piece of software.
Beyond that, though, the gatherings couldn't have been more different. The
first, called CodeCon, drew 100 or so mostly young programmers, many from
the open-source software movement, to a dark and cavernous San Francisco
dance club, the venue chosen largely because it was cheap. Attendance cost
$80, but you got to go to a Friday night reception at a nearby restaurant
with burgers, pizza and beer.
The second event was Demo, and it took place at a Scottsdale, Ariz., desert
resort that was selected for its golf course, plush rooms, gourmet food and
free-flowing open bars. The entry price there was $3,000, and more than 600
people showed up, though many were journalists who got in free.
While Demo -- and elite industry shows like it -- are sometimes portrayed
as carefully juried competitions of the current crop of tech innovation, in
fact, the main prerequisite for getting up on stage in Scottsdale was a
willingness to write a check for up to $16,000 to Demo's organizers. There
were an eye-glazing 75 presentations in all, most lasting six minutes.
At CodeCon, by contrast, it didn't cost anything for the 15 featured
speakers to present their ideas. They did, however, have to be selected in
advance by conference planners Len Sassaman and Bram Cohen.
If that last name sounds familiar, it's because Mr. Cohen is the author of
BitTorrent, the file-sharing software that is often used to download
pirated movies and that, by one estimate, is now responsible for 30% of all
Web traffic because those files are so big. BitTorrent, which has legal
uses too, was unveiled at the first CodeCon back in 2002, and it remains
the show's greatest hit.
Most of the folks presenting at Demo were small start-up companies in
"heat-seeking" mode, eager to snag a write-up from one of the freeloading
reporters or, better yet, an investment from one of the many venture
capitalists, hedge-fund managers, angel investors and other moneymen
working the halls.
At CodeCon, presenters tended to be small groups of programmers with far
more modest goals. A mention of your project in Slashdot, the blog of
record for techies, would be considered a home run. If, as a result of the
buzz from your presentation, you got a job interview at Google, that might
be a double.
The Luddites among you out there will probably be pleased to learn that
both gatherings were plagued by technical snafus. At CodeCon, the bulb in
the projector that speakers used to show their slides blew out on the first
day. One presenter improvised during the blackout by inviting the crowd to
gather around his laptop as he put his software through its paces.
At Demo, the whole network kept going down, which is no small detail when
you are trying to demonstrate something that works over the Internet. A
number of presenters thus found themselves living the entrepreneur's fever
dream of being on stage in a crowded hotel ballroom in front of a blank
screen, saying, in effect, "Trust me, the product really works."
A lot of Demo was focused on the computing needs of big companies, while
CodeCon was skewed to the sorts of computer-programming projects that would
interest computer programmers. But there was some overlap, too. See if you
can guess which of these programs was introduced at which conference:
A) Gleeper, for discovering new Web sites.
B) Browster, for speeding up Web searches.
C) IntelleDox, for coordinating changes to word-processing documents.
D) ApacheCA, for coordinating changes to a software project.
(Answers: CodeCon, Demo, Demo, CodeCon.)
If, through some space-time warp, the Demo people had found themselves at
CodeCon, they would probably have regarded many of the projects as crude,
unfinished or of limited appeal. Conversely, those at CodeCon would likely
have sneered that the Demo products were often me-too entrants into
already-crowded markets, innovative mainly in their use of the current
buzzwords.
But it's not as though the two groups are inherently antagonistic to each
other. While open-source buffs like those at CodeCon are sometimes
described as the Bolsheviks of the tech world, most would only too happily
start a company, and many probably will when they get a little older. The
Demo people, mostly in their 40s and 50s, haven't become too ossified to
remember that earth-shaking innovations in these days of Linux and the
Internet can turn up anywhere, even a San Francisco nightclub.
Indeed, venture capitalists are starting to pop up at CodeCon, and the
aforementioned hamburger reception was sponsored by Google itself.
In short, spending a few days at both CodeCon and Demo offered a handy way
to visit both the top and the bottom of the technology food chain. I will,
though, leave it up to you to decide which conference was which.
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R. A. Hettinga