I am flying back from the Demo conference in Arizona. In fact, I'd say that this flight is the Silicon Valley Demo Express. As I look around me, most of the faces I see are folks I have seen for the last couple of days at the conference. There are at least a dozen VCs I know on this flight. Rafe Needleman is sitting behind me. Entrepreneurs abound. Now that I think about it, I should stop typing and go schmooz. No thanks. I've had enough schmoozing for this week.

For those of you who haven't been to or read about Demo before, it is a conference where dozens of companies launch new technologies in rapid fire succession on stage. They then demonstrate their technologies in a ballroom between sessions so that you can dig into the technology in greater detail. The conference is presented by Chris Shipley. Chris also runs DemoMobile, with a similar format but a focus on mobile services, devices, applications, etc. Chris spends innumerable non-conference hours meeting with and screening potential demonstrators. She clearly has a good eye not just for interesting technology but also for entertainment. As a result, the conference is fast-paced, interesting and generally fun (give or take long stretches of enterprise application demos). And because Chris gathers an interesting group of entrepreneurs, the show also typical gathers an interesting group of VCs as well. It's an excellent opportunity for folks like myself to meet up with smart entrepreneurs and VCs — folks who will be a great potential source of future investments.

From a demonstrator's perspective, Demo is a great event because it attracts incredible press. Walt Mossberg is a fixture. He wanders the ballroom grilling companies about their new technology (I listened to his questions on a number of occasions — he was tough but he was dead on). Walt's compatriots from the Wall Street Journal, the USA Today, Business 2.0, the trade press, etc. are all there to see what interesting things might be unveiled at Demo. As fun as it was to watch the entrepreneurs and journalists dance, I found it even more fun to watch the pack of PR people handle their CEO's. The PR folks hustle the journalists over to their clients and, when that doesn't work, they hustle their clients over to the journalists. The CEO's have been well trained by their PR folks to stick to simple messages, be energetic and be charming, and some of them even manage to do all three. But if all goes well at Demo, the many dollars spent on PR handling, conference fees, plane flights, hotel rooms, etc. will be well spent. Innumerable articles are written about Demo and if you are able to capture the attention of the press, you will get some wonderful publicity out of the show.