What’s so great about DEMO is the people you meet–press (like Walt Mossberg), CEOs, analysts, “technology bird dogs” (a title one attendee gave himself–he assess technology for a large company), and many others.
For instance at lunch I sat at a table with a VC, an analyst, and three technology “assessors”–all from large companies.
We all compared notes on what demo we thought was the most interesting so far. MDA and its 3D scene modelling technology pulled the most votes.
The other company they were interested in? MindJet. The MindJet demo hasn’t been given yet, but one person was sharing the flyer they’d picked up for the MindManager product. There appears to be lots of interest in the collaboration possibilities with products like this.
And it wasn’t long before the table was querying me about the state of Tablets. How many Tablets have been sold? (More than a million). What’s the growth rate like? (Projected to be 40% this next year.) Who is purchasing Tablets? (Healthcare, Govn’t, Educators, early adopters, and on and on.) Do Tablets steal customers from laptops or do they create new markets? (Both, but I see lots of Tablet owners migrate from laptops wanting more mobility.)
Gradually the conversation morphed into a discussion of mobility and contemplating what will be practical with adhoc networks, VoIP and the like. Yes, WiFi has dramatically changed the way most of us use our computers. We’re more productive more often now because of technologies such as WiFi. Tablets and the added mobility the form-factor provides appear to be nicely aligned with these mobility and networking trends.