It was a packed house last night at Vicious Circle, where four intrepid companies demonstrated their wares on questionable A/V equipment and slow wi-fi while background music was emanating from the other side of the bar. And by all accounts, it was a huge hit. The casual atmosphere gave DemoCampers an opportunity to freely mix while enjoying the beverage of their choice, and we saw a lot of mixing going on. A majority of the attendees stuck around for an hour or two after the event, exchanging ideas, advice and business cards.
There are at least two reasons why you would attend a DemoCamp – the first one is to see the latest and greatest stuff from fellow technology entrepreneurs; the second one is to meet some interesting people with common interests and goals. Last night, we succeeded in both areas for many, if not all attendees. Be sure to give us your feedback, as the organizing committee continues to work on making these events even better!
Here’s a wrap up of the companies that presented last night:
Casey Pechet of IVOXX demonstrated the ultimate iPod accessory – it was a voice-recognition device that attaches to the back of an iPod. Still in prototype form, he first gave the command “play some stones” to the device – and a Rolling Stones song played. He gave it a command to “play some Led Zeppelin”, and it did. Then, he asked it to “play more like this”, and the device played a somewhat similar song. The final production version will also be able to accept commands such as “play something higher energy” or “play something slow”. This has huge implications for those of us who aren’t organized enough to categorize our music libraries. The device is slated for an August release, and will retail at $129 as an official “made for iPod”, Apple approved product.
Lino Ramirez of Aranducorp showed us what appeared to be an early build of a predictive analytics engine for charities. The product, when released, will help charities raise more money by helping them to predict and target those most sympathetic and generous to the cause.
Lorand Szojka of JIT Resources showed a customer site developed on their video streaming platform, which delivers private training and corporate messaging videos to enterprise clients.
To round out the evening, Matt Cox and Sarath Samarasekera demoed Shopster, which was described as a fully-networked retail e-commerce solution. For companies and individuals looking for an alternative to advertising-based revenues, Shopster offers a fully-customizable e-commerce store site template, complete with over 1,000,000 items in inventory.
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Mark your calendars for the next event:
April 8th 6:30pm – April 8th 8:30pm, 2008
DemoCampCalgary 8– at Melrose Cafe & Bar – Calgary, AB