DEMO & VentureBeat head to Atlanta, a city that punches above its weight
I’m traveling to Atlanta tomorrow, in just the lastest trip I’m making to major cities to meet with local start-ups and entrepreneurs.
Atlanta gets overlooked as a technology and business center. While it’s a small city — at only the 33rd largest in the nation — it has the third largest concentration of Fortune 500 companies headquartered within its borders.
And there are reasons why entrepreneurship should percolate well here going forward. There’s Georgia Tech, its research institute and the incubators associated with it, such as the ATDC. There’s UGA, Emory, and Savannah College of Art and Design (which has a successful gaming program). There are industry leaders such Turner Broadcasting, and well, AT&T Wireless (cough, I traded in my iPhone for a Droid recently because of AT&T’s awful coverage, but I won’t dwell on that for now; at least AT&T had the foresight to sign an early exclusive deal with the iPhone, one of the most revolutionary pieces of technology today). There’s a good overview here of Atlanta’s tech promise and of the challenges it faces.
We’ll be at the Palomar Hotel Wednesday evening from 7pm to 9pm, if not later. The first 40 people to show up will receive a free cocktail. Make sure you register. We’ve already got a good list of people signed up. Join me, local entrepreneurs, investors, startup professionals, and DEMO alumni companies for cocktails and conversation.
It will be the first time I’m bringing VentureBeat and DEMO to Atlanta. As founder of VentureBeat, I’m looking to cover the stories of entrepreneurs who are building great technology companies. And I wear a second hat, as Executive Producer of the DEMO conference. As such, I’m also on the prowl for the most promising technology products we can find to showcase at the upcoming conference in Palm Springs, Calif., in March.
As I’ve written before, DEMO surely isn’t right for every company, but if a company is looking to grab market share quickly and needs a very loud bang, there’s probably no better place. Major companies and products have launched there, from Salesforce.com, to VMWare, TiVo, Palm Pilot, Netscape, Sun’s Java, Adobe Acrobat and ETrade, to name a few. Some 93 percent of the companies that have launched at DEMO in its 20 year history have either gone public, been acquired or are still alive.
DEMO offers professional event standards unmatched by any other. There’s a long list reasons mentioned on the page here (peruse the various links there. Sometimes it’s the small things that count: For one, the Internet works without fail. You’d think that would be obvious, but it’s not. Time and again, I’ve seen it go down at other conferences, and that can ruin a company’s big launch day; DEMO invests serious dough into making sure the network stays up. DEMO also offers high-definition video, coaching, and PR help. It also offers a level playing field, so that a small company gets the same treatment as a major company (a Cisco, for example, can’t come in and buy 100,000 square feet of demonstrator space). As for the audience, the world’s media shows up, corporate developer officers from major companies are there, and top investors come too.
I’ve written more about what we’re doing lately with DEMO here, here, and here. But I’ll be writing about a few great testimonials in the coming days.
See you in Atlanta!
