<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. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'