Last Wednesday afternoon, after all 56 companies had demonstrated their products and each of the 14 Alpha Pitch companies told their stories, after 15 outstanding entrepreneurs accepted their Lifetime Achievement Awards and seven companies collected DEMOgod trophies, after Liaise and Emo Labs received grand prizes totaling $1M in advertising and marketing support, after two-and-a-half days of networking and demonstrating and fun, I said goodbye to DEMO after 13 years at the helm.

I would say that it was a bittersweet moment, except that there has been nothing bitter about these last 13 years, and certainly no bitterness in passing the torch to VentureBeat’s Matt Marshall.  He will take DEMO and make it his own and he will do very well.

I was humbled by the response of the audience on Wednesday afternoon, giving a standing ovation as I said farewell.  Humbled, certainly, but I suppose not surprised by the kindness in that gesture.  As I told the audience last week, it has always been the people that have made DEMO so special.

I didn’t understand that at the start.  I’d been to DEMO a couple of times and enjoyed the conference. Stewart Alsop set the tone and Lia Lorenzano, who managed the business for many years, taught me that DEMO was all about the experience.  She embedded that idea so deeply into every person she enlisted to work on the show that her ethic persists today.

I’ve been honored to have nearly 20,000 companies trust me to listen to their pitches and provide a fair critique.  And I’ve been privileged to be a part of some 1,500 product launches, many of them the coming out party as well for the companies that created them. The fact that so many meetings took place with so few calendar screw ups is a testament to the time management skills of Alice Mar, and before her Joanne Donn.

These products and companies have been generously received by my peers in the media.  DEMO often felt like a twice-yearly reunion of some of the best journalists and analysts covering technology.  Folks like Ed Baig, Mike Miller, Walt Mossberg, Amy Wohl, Steve Wildstrom, Arik Hesseldahl, Janet Rae-Dupree, Jan Ziff, Allan Davidson, and Rafe Needleman were the stalwarts of the DEMO media list, joined more recently by the bench at c|net and the crew from VentureBeat, along with bloggers such Jean-Baptiste Su, Graeme Thickins, Eliane Fiolet, and even a couple of guys from TechCrunch.  And for many years, there was Shel Israel in the second row reminding me before the opening of each conference to “just don’t say anything stupid.”

For a couple of days at each DEMO event, the media and PR folks seem to get along just fine.  DEMO’s amazing media relations team made sure of it.  Susan Thomas in the early days of my tenure mentored Becky Sniffen and Carla Thompson, who subsequently filled the job for many years.  Erica Lee and Kristi Kilpatrick took a year off from launching companies at DEMO to handle media for the conference until the team from Porter Novelli in Austin  – Laura Beck, Lisa Peterson, Caroline Traylor, and Josh Dilworth – took on the job.  The able assist from PRNewswire’s team assured that the demonstrators’ news reached the ends of the earth.

While journalists filled the front rows for the power outlets if not the best views of the stage, the seats behind them filled with “regulars” who made DEMO a reunion of friends.   John Landry, Mitchell Kertzman, John Jordan, Lois Paul, John Patrick, Steve Larsen, Scott Sangster, Christine Herron, Philip Korn, Phil Sanderson,  Don Dodge, and IDG Chairman Pat McGovern, who always took a seat midway in the room so that he could gauge the audience as much as the stage.

These were among the many faces I could see from the lights of the DEMO stage.  Of course, many, many more people, literally thousands, came through the doors of DEMO over the past 13 years.  And while they saw me on stage, they were really looking at the handiwork of dozens of the most professional crew one could ever hope to work with.   In the early days, Matt Hrdlicka and his crew at The Trillium managed the staging.  More recently, Evergreen Creative’s team lead by Rob Lee, Chris Jeffries-Dowling, and  Blake Brown , along with Wayne, Stacey, Brian, Steve, and a dozen  of the greatest crew always made sure I looked and sounded good on stage. Our networks ran flawlessly thanks to the diligence of Dave Washburn, Arthur Gressick, and Chris Angerame.

In the pavilion, Gretchen Walker assisted Jackie DiPerna who, as demonstrator manager, is the lynchpin of the demonstrator experience.  When I told the staff I’d be leaving DEMO, Jackie was the first to ask about my successor, “Will he be good to the demonstrators?”  That’s the spirit of the DEMO team Jackie so fully embodies. We’ve always been fortunate to have great professionals in that role.  Elizabeth Parsons, Alexa Hanes, and in the earliest days, Donnie Burke.

IDG has always fielded a strong team on this project.  Lia brought on Jeanne Campos, who hired Karyn Williams, who brought on Karen Daitch.  They all had a hand in managing DEMO from soup to nuts over the years.  After DEMO joined forces with IDG’s Network World, Robin Azar and then Neal Silverman lead the charge, with brilliant oversight by John Gallant.  They built dedicated teams in marketing (Mike Garity, Deb Becker, Christina Butkiewicus, Christina Spano, Buster Paris, Mark Hollister) and operations (Dale Fisher, Caroline Keough, Renee Corine Arnold, Karen Bornstein), sponsorship (Andrea D’Amato) and finance (Betty Amaro-White).

And I must say this about Karyn Williams:  She is a tremendously talented events professional, a great friend, and a blast to work with. For ten years, she took on the burden of my stress, perfectly organized every minute of every general session,  wrestled with countless crises, smoothed a ganglia of nerves, all with incredible grace.

Lastly, but in no way least, the Guidewire Group team has been a tremendous support to me and DEMO’s brightest fan club.  Mike Sigal has been an advocate for the brand, an unseen extension of the marketing team, and a pitch hitter on the sales team.  Carla Thompson is an outstanding analyst and carried more of the burden of demonstrator selection than most people know.  Alice Mar was first point of contact for many companies, ably juggling calendars to ensure that every applicant got fair time for a pitch.  Susan Thomas and Mike Rogers are dedicated advisors and strategists.  And former colleagues Charlotte Ziems and Julie Learmond-Criqui so often kept the wheels on the cart during my preoccupation with all things DEMO.

There are, no doubt, countless others who have worked on, presented at, reported, and attended DEMO these past 13 years.  The oversight of my bad memory in no way mitigates their contributions to this incredible institution.

Yesterday, October 1, was the first day in more than 13 years that I had no official capacity with DEMO.  It will take some getting used to, I’m sure.  But as should be evident from this litany of appreciation, DEMO remains in very capable hands.  Matt Marshall and his VentureBeat team, to be sure, but as importantly to the many, many more fine people who make this event the leading product launch platform that it is.

Who could ask for a better job? For the past 13 years, I’ve spent my days talking with some of the smartest people on the planet. People passionate about technology and the art and science of molding that technology into products and services that address real challenges and bring new capabilities to people’s lives.

I’d be hard pressed to make an accurate count, but I’d guess that since taking the reins of DEMO in the spring of 1996, I’ve met no fewer than 15,000 entrepreneurs, inventors, and innovators, and helped about 1,500 of them launch their products to market on the DEMO stage.

DEMO has given me the opportunity to travel the world; meet with government officials and business leaders; interview certified geniuses and a few certifiable nut cases, and through newsletters (back in the day), blog posts, speaking gigs, interviews, and the DEMO conference itself share back a bit of what I’ve learned and the realizations that learning sparked.

DEMO, with its emphasis on product innovation, is an amazing lens and filter through which to gauge the future of the information technology industry and the markets as they open, undulate, and fold over time. The conference is a tremendous reviewing platform for new ideas and a lookout post for emerging and impactful trends.

It may not be surprising, then, to learn that after all these years, the lookout perch that is DEMO gave me the opportunity to see a new future for myself and for my company, Guidewire Group.

So early last year, I began the process of transitioning from DEMO so that I could start my next career in earnest. The first step, of course, was making sure that this was the right new path for myself, my family, and my Guidewire Group colleagues. DEMO has been a big part of all our lives for a long, long time. We all did a lot of soul searching and determined that, yes, we were ready to put our full energies behind the Guidewire Group business: working with technology companies during the critical transition points in their businesses to identify opportunity, define strategy, and accelerate the path to success.

The next step was more difficult: working with our partners at IDG and Network World to identify a successor. DEMO is a great job and a challenging one, and it’s not an easy post to fill. We found the most perfect fit in an accomplished journalist, entrepreneur, and kindred spirit, Matt Marshall. Over the last year, I’ve had the opportunity to work with and get to know Matt and his team at Venture Beat. He is a talented, smart, deeply ethical journalist and he and his writers have created a remarkable, respected brand and business. And he is the perfect person to pick up the reins of DEMO as I lay them down after the DEMOfall event in September.

Matt and I share many of the same values, foremost of which are the respect for entrepreneurs and the process of innovation and the commitment to act with integrity and fairness as we serve our customers and communities. But Matt and Venture Beat are more than a pin-for-pin replacement for me and Guidewire Group. They bring new perspective to DEMO. While much about DEMO will remain the same, surely Matt will make a wonderful impression on the brand and the business. The new partnership between DEMO and Venture Beat promises a broader platform for the DEMO community and a richer conversation that will span the events. Together, Venture Beat and DEMO have an exciting future, and I’m eager to see it unfold.

I’m equally eager to unfold the future of Guidewire Group, a company I co-founded in 200 with Mike Sigal. In the past four years, Guidewire Group has evolved into an analyst firm laser-focused on startups. We work with young companies in the U.S. and Europe at key transition points, to develop and deliver business strategy and monetization and market validation. Through custom projects, events such as Innovate!Europe, and Guidewire Studio, our exclusive in-residence program, we’re doing the work I love most – helping startups thrive.

We have an exciting future planned for Guidewire Group and I look forward to sharing our vision with you in the months ahead. We have been privileged and honored to work with this great brand and the amazing people who have been associated with DEMO across the last 13 years.

And we’re looking forward to the next six months as we work just as diligently as we always have on DEMOfall 09, while transitioning the Executive Producer mantle to Matt and his team.

It’s no secret that DEMO, the launch event owned and operated by IDG and programmed by Guidewire Group, has faced stiff criticism for its practice of charging selected companies an $18,500 fee to participate in its program, which is as much about go-to-market and after-launch support as it is about making a six-minute demonstration on a public stage. A new competitor, TechCrunch, does not charge a fee to the companies it recruits to its TC50 conference, coincidentally scheduled to overlap with DEMOfall in early September. As the “free” launch platform, TC50 has positioned itself as the friend of entrepreneurs and its co-producer has taken umbrage at DEMO’s “payola” (his words, not ours) business model.

In fact, Jason Calacanis commented on a post on this blog earlier this week:

At the end of the day I don’t have a problem with you Chris. I actually think you’re very smart and cool. What I do have a problem with is the $18,500 fee. Intelligent folks can disagree about these fees, and the different models of our shows. I believe we have a better model and that the marketplace will vote with our model and “conference payola” (I know you don’t like the term) will stop. As an entrepreneur myself I want to kill the “pay for play” model.

So it was with keen interest that I saw an email yesterday from Heather Harde, TechCrunch CEO, regarding TechCrunch’s MeetUp at August Capital in July. An excerpt:

TechCrunch would love to explore renewed opportunities for event sponsorship. Our base package is $5k for a demo table with pre/post event promotional branding. We have options that go bigger and smaller too.

II. TechCrunch Partner and Product-Launch Sponsors – 6 spots available
Price: $10,000 – 25,000 (Price based on value of chosen programs)
Benefits:

• Top-level company branding on the TechCrunch dedicated MeetUp page and on-site signage
• Center traffic position for demo station; premium logo placement on sponsor banners at the August Capital meetup venue
• Larger demonstration space (5′ table) in TechCrunch demo showcase
• Product Launch Sponsor Options: (a) pre-event press outreach and onsite press support at the MeetUp; (b) 2 week advertising spot on TechCrunch
• 150 word product description and web site link listed on the TechCrunch dedicated MeetUp page

For those of you playing along at home, that’s a $10,000-$25,000 charge to launch your product at TechCrunch’s MeetUp. Make no mistake, this is standard operating procedure in the tech world and would be unremarkable were it not for the fact that Mike and Jason (mostly Jason) slam DEMO on a weekly basis for charging startups to launch.

Since I’m giving free press to the benefits of launching your startup for a fee at the TechCrunch MeetUp, I think it’s important to share a couple of stats about launching at DEMO:

• Each company launching at DEMO averages close to three million media impressions from conference coverage.
• In the past four years alone, over 40 DEMO alumni companies have been acquired.
• In just the past five years, DEMO alumni have raised over $3.5 billion in venture funding – and that is only a quick scan of 35-50% of the total demonstrator class for a given event.

We’ve said repeatedly that we welcome a newcomer on the conference stage and that, with more spaced-out timing, both TechCrunch 50 and DEMOfall can benefit entrepreneurs. But can we all finally agree that everyone involved – from producers to sponsors to startups – has profit as at least a partial motivator? At the end of the day, this is business plain and simple, and waging war on a company for profit-making enterprises is essentially rejecting the very atmosphere you claim to foster.