We’ll be meeting with ten local tech companies during the day in a feedback session with Peter Pham from Science, myself, and others.

During the evening, we’re inviting members of the Southern California tech community to network at SOUTH (3001 Wilshire Boulevard, Santa Monica, CA) from 7pm to 9pm. We’ll be buying drinks for the first fifty people through the door; sign up here. Do so quickly, because space is limited.

The meetup is another stop in our DEMO Innovation Tour, during which the DEMO team (I’m executive producer of DEMO) travels the world to connect with the global tech community in search of the best companies and products to showcase at DEMO Spring, taking place April 17-19, 2012.

You can get the full details on the event page.

We’ll be heading down to the Science Santa Monica offices in three days to meet with 10 local companies as part of our global DEMO tour. If you’d like to be one of those 10, fill out this form by Tuesday, Feb. 21 at noon, and we’ll be in touch shortly with more details.

We look forward to seeing you in LA!

LinkedIn is definitely a powerful tool to connect with business professionals and potential clients, but communicating with your connections isn’t always effective. Let’s face it, do you keep on top of your LinkedIn inbox as much as your other social networks? Probably not. Hookflash realized that LinkedIn contacts can be very valuable, but not exactly easy to talk to, so it created an app to fix the problem.

“The value of your communications device or technology is directly proportional to how easy it makes it to communicate with the people in your network and maintain your directory of contacts. LinkedIn is the best service in the world at doing that for you, so we integrated LinkedIn as a directory instead of building our own,” Hookflash chief executive and co-founder Trent Johnsen told VentureBeat. “Hookflash leverages the social aspects of LinkedIn and enables instant voice, video, or text communications with anyone in LinkedIn directory via the iPad — which is increasingly becoming the work tool of choice.”

The app will let you place voice and video calls and send text messages to any of your LinkedIn contacts for free. And it will display LinkedIn profile and activity feed information for each contact in the app, so you’ll know who you’re talking to and what they’ve been doing.

Unlike its competitor Skype, there is no need to build a list of contacts. When you log in to your LinkedIn account in the app, your information will be synced automatically. The app also pulls information from LinkedIn so your conversations have more context than they would with Skype.

Hookflash is slated to be available in the App Store in March. Until then, you can sign up for early access on the company’s website.

Hookflash debuted last year at DEMO Fall 2011. The company is based in Calgary, Alberta and Palo Alto, California and has raised $1.2M funding from Sora Group.

We know Chicago has turned into a hive of startup talent, so it seemed like the logical place to go to meet up-and-coming innovators. This will be our first time out that way, so if you’re building the next big tech company in Chicago, we want to meet with you.

While in town, we’ll be partnering up with Tom Hawes and Millie Tadewaldt of Sandbox Industries, the new Chicago-based incubator and investment firm.

Like us, Sandbox wants to see the best new companies the city has to offer, so if you’re interested in meeting with Tom, Millie, and me (I’m with VentureBeat and DEMO), please fill out this form, and we’ll be in touch with more details shortly.

We’ve been traveling the globe for the past few months and meeting with as many entrepreneurs as possible along the way, all in preparation for the upcoming DEMO conference in April. Last week, we visited Boulder and Palo Alto, and soon we’ll be making trips to Boston, Austin, Detroit, and LA. DEMO’s Executive Producer, Matt Marshall, will actually be off in Singapore while I’m exploring the Midwest. More information on all of those trips is soon to come.

We’re looking forward to seeing you in Chicago on the 27th!

Tom Hawes

Millie Tadewaldt

We’ll be there as part of our global DEMO tour, and we’ll be partnering with three of the top mentors Boston has to offer. Antonio Rodriguez (partner at Matrix Partners), Katie Rae (head of Techstars Boston and Project 11), and Fred Destin (partner at Atlas Venture) will all be there with me (from VentureBeat and DEMO), at your service to provide feedback on your technology, business model, pitch style, or anything else that might help.

If you’re going to be in the area and your post-Super Bowl depression has eased enough to attend, please fill out this form by the end of the day today. If selected, we’ll be in touch shortly with more details. Looking forward to seeing you in Boston next week!

Update: We have reached our capacity for the party. Thanks to everyone who has signed up to attend. 

Come party and network with VentureBeat, Kleiner Perkins, and the DEMO community this week at our DEMO meetup event.

VentureBeat and Kleiner Perkins are hosting a DEMO meetup on Thursday, February 9 at the Dutch Goose in Menlo Park. Ten companies will be selected from dozens of applications to participate in a feedback session with a Kleiner Perkins partner and VentureBeat’s own Matt Marshall, executive producer of DEMO.

During the evening, the 10 companies will be given the opportunity to present attendees in the DEMO Alpha Pitch 90-second format.

We invite you to join us, DEMO alumni attendees, this year’s demonstrators, local entrepreneurs, and VCs for a casual evening of cocktails and conversation. Complimentary drinks will be served from 6-8 p.m., courtesy of the AARP.

The meetup kicks off the DEMO Innovation Tour where Matt and the DEMO team will travel around the country to connect with the global DEMO community in search of  the best innovation to showcase at DEMO Spring, taking place April 17-19, 2012.

Space is limited for this free event, so sign up quickly. You can get the full details on the event page.

We’ll be heading down to the KPCB Menlo Park offices in three days to meet with 10 local companies as part of our global DEMO tour. If you’d like to be one of those 10, fill out this form by Tuesday at noon, and we’ll be in touch shortly with more details.

We’re also throwing a party at the Dutch Goose Thursday night, which you can register for here. Looking forward to seeing you in Menlo Park later this week!

The service, which launched today, lets startups create a company profile free of cost to attract investors. Likewise, investors can use the site to quickly locate and vote on innovative ideas and companies. The site claims to filter out bad businesses, simplifying the time-consuming research process for both entrepreneurs and investors.

“About a year and a half ago, I was working for FundingPost.com, a website similar to PitchBig, and I started to look at the entrepreneurial space. There just wasn’t a good space for investors and entrepreneurs to connect,” CEO Jason Biondo told VentureBeat. “Our competitors, AngelList and Go Big Networks weren’t incorporating different social aspects. One big feature on my site is that you’re competing against other entrepreneurs and investors. Every member gets a Pitch Score, which is an algorithm behind closed doors. If you make the right connections, your Pitch Score will go up. That adds a game layer on top of the social network.”

The Pitch Score ranking algorithm combines user votes, company recommendations, and generated fan interest to rate a business on its potential success. The site also incorporates flexible privacy settings so new startups can protect valuable ideas and share them only with specific users. The site also uses a “LinkedIn connections” approach; members have to be associated with other companies in order to send a message to them, ensuring each startup is matched only with interested investors.

PitchBig is a small bootstrapped company operating out of Hartford, Connecticut.

Image via dierken/Flickr.

Mike Jones, Science

If you’re working on the next big tech product, come meet me and Mike Jones and Peter Pham of Science, the new group in Los Angeles focused on building profitable new startups. We’ll be offering feedback to early-stage companies. We’ll offer free advice about your presentation style, your technology, your business model, or your go-to-market strategy.

Mike and Peter have impressive ties in LA and broad experience with startups and larger companies. Mike was most recently CEO of Myspace, where he managed the downsizing of that company and its sale to SpecificMedia. He also led Userplane from startup to acquisition by AOL and then started Tsavo Media, which was acquired by Cyberplex for $75M. Altogether, he’s invested in more than 30 companies.

Peter Pham, Science

Peter has held a frenetic pace in the startup world. He was vice president of business development at Photobucket and helped that company get acquired for $300 million by Fox Interactive Media. He then moved on to BillShrink, where he was CEO, then co-founded Color in 2010.

At Science, Pham and Jones have joined others to help startups grow through hands-on help and funding – a model that can be best compared to that of Betaworks in New York.

If you’re interested in meeting with Mike, Peter, and me, please fill out this form, and we’ll be in touch with more details shortly.

This is just the latest stop in VentureBeat’s road trip to find coolest new products to launch at DEMO, the semi-annual tech conference we co-produce. I’ve been traveling the globe and meeting with as many entrepreneurs as possible along the way. This week, I’ll be in Boulder and Palo Alto, followed up by trips to Boston, Austin, Chicago, Detroit, and Singapore soon after.

DEMO has proven itself a great launch platform for startups, mid-level companies, and fully developed, publicly traded corporations over the past 20 years. We’ve also made plenty of refinements recently, including the start of our Scholarship Partner Program, which lets many early stage companies launch for free. Alumni include Palm, Salesforce, E-Trade, SuccessFactors (just sold to SAP for $3.4 billion), WebEx and VMWare, Sun (Java), and Adobe (Acrobat).

We’ll see you in LA in a couple of weeks!

Yes, there’s something in it for VentureBeat. We’re on the prowl to find the most exciting products to write about (eventually, when your product is ready), and also to invite to launch our upcoming DEMO conference. The next DEMO takes place April 17-19 in Silicon Valley.

And yes, there’s something in it for the venture capital firms: They get to establish relationships with smart, ambitious entrepreneurs early on in the history of their companies, without the pressure of a full-on money pitch.

And there’s something certainly in it for you: If you’re an entrepreneur based in the Boulder area and think you’re building the next big disruptive tech company, or you’re here in Silicon Valley trying to do the same, we’re going to be brutally honest with you about what we think. We want to give you quick, helpful advice on your your technology, your business model and your go-to-market strategy, so that you can get to the next step. In many sessions, to be honest, we encourage companies to pivot completely, to find a better way.

COLORADO: Feb 8

So if you’re based in Colorado, join us on February 8 for a private feedback session in Boulder, with Foundry Group, one of the best venture capital  firms in town. As previously reported, we’re inviting ten companies who plan to launch products soon to pitch their ideas to key partners at Foundry as well as to me (as DEMO Executive Producer, I select the companies to present at DEMO).

If you’re interested in this, please fill out this form. We’ll also be co-hosting a party with AARP at the T-Zero Lounge from 6-8pm that evening, and the drinks will be on us (for that, register to attend here). Indeed, AARP is also sponsoring full scholarships for three companies focused on products which also serve the 50+ year-old market, to launch DEMO Spring in April. If interested in that opportunity, apply here)

SF BAY AREA: Feb 9

Or if you’re based in the SF Bay Area, join us and one of the city’s most respected venture capital groups, Kleiner Perkins on February 9  (please fill out this form). We’ll also be throwing a party sponsored by AARP that night from 6 to 8 at the Dutch Goose for entrepreneurs interested in coming (register to attend here).

Looking forward to seeing you!

This sponsored post is produced by DEMO.

It’s time to launch your product. But where? Choosing the right platform to make your product’s first public appearance is critical. DEMO’s track record of successes, turnkey services and exposure for your company and product to a worldwide audience of VCs, investors, buyers and press, make DEMO your best option. Here are a few reasons why:

DEMO Scholarship Program Guarantees 20 very early-stage company’s spots at DEMO Fall for no charge and 10 partial scholarships for companies meeting funding requirements. For scholarship considering, applications must be received by February 17.

DEMO Innovation Tour. DEMO is more influential because it has a long history of enlisting top VCs to help bring innovators to market, including companies like Accel Partners, RRE Ventures, Austin Ventures and many more. In fact, in February and March, entrepreneurs can apply to launch in front of VCs at Kleiner Perkins, Madrona Group, Atlas Ventures and others..

FREE launch for college groups. DEMO is more diverse, providing a unique College Alpha Program that gives student innovators a free chance to pitch for 90 seconds and promote their product idea to a worldwide audience of potential investors and business partners.

Apply to Launch or Pitch Deadline: February 17, 2012.

DEMO Sage Program: Launch and pitch companies will receive constructive, valuable feedback and help from key members of the DEMO tech ecosystem—DEMO alumni, VCs, CEO’s from fast-growing startups and angel investors, industry luminaries and disrupters

Opportunity to win DEMO People’s Choice $1M Advertising Campaign: A robust advertising campaign, devoted to sharing your message and launch video with over 270 million IT buyers worldwide through the powerful brands under the IDG umbrella, including CIO Magazine, CSO Magazine, Computerworld, GamePro, Infoworld, MacWorld, Network World and PC World.

A portfolio of turnkey, personalized services to prepare you for the best launch experience:

• PR support and communications training with a national PR agency
• Demonstrator presentation review with a professional coach
• On-stage rehearsal and feedback
• Post-event promotion of launch video across IDG Global Website Network

DEMO Global Launch Program: DEMO Brazil is the newest member of the DEMO family! Any DEMO Spring 2012 launch company can participate as a showcase sponsor, at no charge, at any international DEMO event in 2012.

Why DEMO? Learn more and apply to launch by February 17!

Kleiner has offered to give feedback to your idea before it comes to market, including on your technology, business model and go-to-market strategy. And if there’s a fit, we can also discuss your launching opportunities at DEMO Spring (April 17-19).

Taking place in Palo Alto on February 9, this will be a great opportunity to receive insight from a Kleiner Perkins partner and myself . Obviously, if you’ve got an interesting idea, we’d like to cover your story on VentureBeat at some point, but for now, the meeting can be considered off-record.

As executive producer of DEMO, I’m also looking to invite the best companies from around the world to launch products at the big Silicon Valley event. Over 21 years, DEMO has proven itself an amazing launch platform for startups, mid-level companies, and fully developed, publicly traded corporations — basically, any company that wants to show off their new tech products to the leading technology media.

Also, we’ve made some changes to keep DEMO the best place for launching products. The DEMO Scholarship Partner Program, which effectively makes DEMO free for many early stage companies, is one more way to ensure we keep attracting the best, even those cool new two-person companies that have very few resources. So like every other company there, you’ll get the same access to pitch counseling, social media help, PR help and more.

Big-name DEMO alum include Fusion-io, which recently went public and is breaking records with a billion input-output commands per second, and SuccessFactors, which was just sold to SAP for $3.4 billion. Other alum include Palm, Salesforce, E*Trade, TiVo, WebEx and VMWare, Sun (Java) and Adobe (Acrobat). Now you have the opportunity to join the club.

If you’re interested in presenting at this meeting on February 9, please fill out this form. If you’re chosen, we’ll get in touch immediately to provide further details and instructions. We’ll also be throwing a party sponsored by AARP that night from 6 to 8 at the Dutch Goose for anyone interested in coming. More details on that to come shortly!

Looking forward to seeing you Menlo Park!

VentureBeat is on a world tour. We’re prowling to find the most exciting products to write about and to invite to the upcoming DEMO conference. The next DEMO takes place April 17-19 in Silicon Valley.

The free pre-DEMO Boston session will give your company a great opportunity to pitch and receive friendly feedback from the best mentors Boston has to offer. We’re teaming with Antonio Rodriguez, partner at Matrix Partners, (top right), Katie Rae, head of Techstars Boston and Project 11, (middle right) and Fred Destin (bottom right), partner at Atlas Venture, where the meetings will take place. I’ll be there too.

Whether it’s advice on your pitch style, your business model, your technology, or go-to-market strategy, we’re there to help. And of course, we’re not there to publicize your company until you’re ready for it. So this can be considered off-the-record.

For 21 years, DEMO has proven to be an incredible launch platform for startups, fast-growth mid-level companies, and even large cap, publicly traded corporations to show off their new tech products to an extensive, influential media audience. Over the years, companies such as Palm, Salesforce, VMware, TiVo, WebEx, Adobe and more recently Fusion-io (the newly public company), and SuccessFactors (which sold to SAP for 3.4 billion) launched some of their earliest products at DEMO. Now, it’s your turn.

We’ve made a lot of changes at DEMO to make sure we get the very best companies there. The DEMO Scholarship Partner Program makes DEMO free for many early stage companies. And we’re holding the event in San Francisco, to make sure we get the globe’s top tech press there, as well as members from the wider ecosystem, from investors to corporate development executives from the largest tech companies. That way companies can get wide publicity and do important deal-making on the side.

If you’re interested in presenting your company on February 14 at the Atlas offices in Cambridge, MA, please fill out this form. If you’re selected, we will get in touch with you immediately to explain the details. You can also see our full DEMO tour schedule online here.

We look forward to seeing you in Boston!

If so, you’ll want to apply to join a special meetup we are hosting with one of Boulder’s most respected venture capitalists, Foundry Group.

Basically, we’re offering awesome, free feedback about your idea.

Here are the details: We’re inviting 10 companies who plan to launch products soon to pitch their ideas to a few key members at Foundry as well as to me (as DEMO Executive Producer, I select the companies to present at DEMO) on Wednesday, February 8. Ideally, we’re looking for companies contemplating launching products at DEMO Spring (held April 17-19 in the Silicon Valley), or in Fall (date TBA).

Of course, as editor-in-chief of VentureBeat, I’m also on the prowl for great companies to write about too — so either way, I’m interested in meeting ambitious entrepreneurs.

We’ll also be co-hosting a party with AARP at the T-Zero Lounge from 6-8pm that evening, and the drinks will be on us. Register to attend here (AARP is also sponsoring full scholarships for three companies focused on the 50+ year-old market to launch DEMO Spring in April. If interested in that opportunity, apply here).

DEMO has become an incredible launch platform for startups, mid-level companies, and fully developed, publicly traded corporations to show off their new tech products to an audience of media, investors and other ecosystem players tracking innovation (many large Silicon Valley companies send their corporate or business development officers, for example). DEMO alumni recently hitting the news include Fusion-io, which went public this year, and SuccessFactors, which was just acquired by SAP for $3.4 billion. They add to the long list of successes that came out of DEMO, which include companies like Salesforce.com, VMWare, WebEx and Palm.

We’ve made a lot of changes to make DEMO even more compelling. A new scholarship program makes it free to attend for most early stage companies, and more affordable for later stage companies too (and we’re doing even more on that going forward). And we’re keeping the event in Silicon Valley, which we’ve found is helpful for most companies wanting to do deals and meetings while they’re here from out of town.

If you’re interested in presenting your ideas to the DEMO team and the members at Foundry, please fill out this form. If you’re selected, we will get in touch with you immediately to explain the details and provide further explanation.

We look forward to seeing you in Boulder!

VentureBeat Founder and Editor-In-Chief Matt Marshall had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and legendary actor Leonard Nimoy on stage at the VentureBeat/DEMO Enterprise Disruption event last night.

Having the co-creator of arguably the most important tech company in the world on stage at the same time as the man famous for captivating entire generations of hopeful space travelers as Star Trek’s Spock is every bit as awesome as you’d expect. This was the first meeting between the two men since their first encounter in 1988 when they casually walked passed each other on Moscow’s Red Square without saying a word.

Fortunately, Nimoy and Wozniak were much more talkative this time, as you can see in the video of the interview embedded below.

After Woz admitted to stealing an usher’s name tag at a local theater to sneak into the midnight premiere showing of the first Star Trek movie, Nimoy followed up by asking him about the practicalities of some of the fictional technology used in Star Trek.

“Is it possible to create a universal translator?,” Nimoy asked, which prompted Woz to explain some of the current technologies available — namely, using Google Translator through a mobile device.

Other highlights include the plausibility of artificial intelligence, references to the race of cyborg drones called the Borg and more.

Anyone who wasn’t able to watch the live stream of our Enterprise Disruption event yesterday should check out our video coverage, including Nimoy’s discussion from earlier in the night.

Update: Scroll down to see a gallery of Nimoy and Wozniak on the DEMO stage!

Come kick off the new year with a celebration of disruptive enterprise technology featuring two huge geek heroes: Steve Wozniak and Leonard Nimoy.

The VentureBeat team, being the huge geeks that we are, are delighted to be co-hosting Enterprise Disruption: An Evening of Change and Innovation tonight in San Francisco. The event, produced by our partners at DEMO and underwritten by Fusion-io, will showcase some truly bright student-led startups.

While the event is at capacity, you can still register to get on the waitlist — or follow along with our live video stream, which will start tonight at 6:15pm Pacific, right here in this post.

Everyone loves a great consumer solution, but enterprise companies are starting to stir up conversation. Social business software company Jive, for example, went public in December, hitting a 30 percent high on its first day of trading. Other companies such as Box and Salesforce have become enterprise household names. So, we’ve decided to take a closer look at what makes the enterprise tick, and how we can create technology to make it better. (Click the image to the left to see the full agenda.)

Tonight’s event features a panel of people on the enterprise front lines. This includes DEMO sages Peter Wagner of Accel Partners, Chris Shaepe of Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Dr. Forest Baskett of New Enterprise Associates. The Fusion-io team — comprised of Steve Wozniak, David Flynn and Rick White — will also do a question and answer session.

We’ll look at innovations happening right now through student-led company demonstrations. The evening finishes with a session led by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and Star Trek star Leonard Nimoy, and is followed by a night of celebration for the new year.

The event kicks off at 5:30, so if you can’t make it to the Temple Nightclub tonight, watch our live stream below!

Click to view slideshow.

Three early-stage, student-led startups and one more-established startup hit the stage at the first-ever DEMO: Enterprise Disruption event this evening to show off their best efforts at reinventing the enterprise.

Teamitt describes what it does as combining people, processes and data to produce more effective results. It’s a sort of dashboard for enterprise resource planning that can give managers better insights into correlations between training and results. Think of it as a kind of Facebook for your company, letting you find employees by expertise, give them invitations to training,

The founders are students from Stanford and UC Berkeley, so Teamitt is already bridging one big cultural communications barrier: that between Cardinal fans and Bears fans.

1DocWay is a site that helps doctors and patients connect with one another for online face-to-face interviews. If your hospital or doctor’s office has 1DocWay, you can log in, view your favorite doctor’s schedule, and request an appointment. It can then take you to a secure, HIPAA-compliant chat room to chat with your physician via a browser-based video chat. Video sessions then get logged so doctors and patients can look them up again and review notes.

“They’re potentially offering something that’s useful … I was impressed,” said Dr. Forrest Baskett, a partner at New Enterprise Associates who reviewed the startups’ pitches.

“A project like 1DocWay is going to live or die less on technology and more on understanding the adoption dynamics in their industry,” said Peter Wagner of Alpha Venturi, another investor, in response to the pitch. “It looked like the team had a pretty good handle on that.”

To start out, 1DocWay is focusing on behavioral health (psychiatry). The company already has a customer (a hospital) and is looking for its seed round of funding. The founders are Wharton business students.

Diffbot is a tool that parses data from web pages to extract relevant data, automatically generating metadata such as an article’s title, author, body text and tags. Using the tool, developers can more easily construct applications that make use of data from the web. During the company’s onstage demonstration, the founder wrote a snippet of JavaScript code on the fly to select all the URLs on Hacker News, pass them through Diffbot, and then load the results. The resulting code instantly reformatted the page to show summaries, tags, and display previews of web pages.

Diffbot’s demo was impressive, and Wagner thought that Diffbot had potential for developers building web applications. Baskett expressed some skepticism based on the short demo, however: “I was worried about their targeting,” said Baskett. “Software developers have some characteristics we all know about. One, there aren’t enough of them and two, they don’t spend much money.”

Stanford University provided Diffbot’s initial funding, and it was the first company to be selected for the Stanford incubator, StartX.

Sococo is a kind of virtual office building for collaborating with your co-workers. It represents each person on the system as a little round head, and you can move from virtual room to virtual room to chat with different groups of people. In Sococo’s “conference rooms” you can also use real-time audio conferencing and document sharing to work on projects together. Also, as of today, the company is adding videoconferencing to its features.

“The whole category of cloud-based communications is a rich one,” said Wagner. He was cautiously optimistic about the company, but suggested that it might need to focus.

“[Sococo is] biting off a lot, though. It’s a great category, but there’s a fair amount of clutter,” Wagner said.

One thing Sococo has going for it: a cute interface that is a bit like Turntable.fm meets the Sims, with little “pop” sounds whenever someone pops into your space.

Speaking more generally, Baskett was bearish on the whole category of cloud services.

“I think that cloud services has only started to develop into what it can be down the road,” said Baskett. “I think the cloud is going to change [a lot], in fundamental ways that we’ve only scratched the surface of.”

Follow #democon on Twitter for up-to-the-minute updates from the DEMO Enterprise event.

Photos: Dylan Tweney/VentureBeat

One of the things I’ve learned over the past two years years while leading the DEMO conference is that great entrepreneurs are able to pitch their company stories clearly and engagingly in about two minutes.

I’ve now seen thousands of pitches, and it’s surprising how few entrepreneurs have mastered this. A flat or unfocused pitch can cause serious harm to your chances. Potential investors give up trying to see magic in you. Potential business partners see no need to follow up. Talented potential employees see nothing to spark their imagination.

Which is why I’m excited to recommend a new day-long workshop on Feb 11, designed for entrepreneurs wanting to learn how to pitch well.

It’s called “So, What’s YOUR Story?,” and it’s led by experts with years of experience in helping entrepreneurs relate their stories. The biggest reason I’m recommending this workshop, though, is because one of its main hosts is Nathan Gold, the official DEMO speaking coach. Nathan has done an outstanding job coaching entrepreneurs who seek out his help (entrepreneurs who are invited to DEMO are advised to seek his input, but they are not required to). Of the companies that go on to win a DEMOGod award, a large majority of them did so after getting advice from Gold before they went on stage. I’ve personally learned a lot from him too.

Now, good public speaking and fine-tuned elevator pitches are just a part of sensible marketing. And marketing isn’t everything. You need substance. Your product has to be sound. You need to be able to follow through. And you need certain traits of character such as perseverance, drive, and courage. But marketing is something many entrepreneurs often leave at the bottom of the priority list — to their detriment. Perhaps this is understandable: Entrepreneurs are often rational and pragmatic by nature, and believe their products should be able to speak for themselves. They often underestimate the importance of passion, of story-telling, of the need to engage, and to convince.

Most entrepreneurs think they tell their story well, by cramming as many details as possible into their pitches. But they often fail — at the higher level. Chris Shipley, my predecessor as executive producer at DEMO for 13 years, saw tens of thousands of pitches, and notes this well in her quote in this video (or click below) produced by Gold. I’m quoted too, at the end.

So, What’s YOUR Story? from Show n Tell on Vimeo.

I’d argue that many entrepreneurs don’t see the value of marketing until they are taken through a process like this. In many instances, they’re surprised at how flat their stories turn out to be. The challenge to produce a compelling story often forces them back to the drawing board — and pushes them to filter out unnecessary noise that may be distracting them from their core mission. This can be good for the business. The entrepreneur may scrap unnecessary features or elements of their business model. They’ll often emerge with renewed mission focus and fire.

Along with Gold, the workshop is led by a few other heavyweights in storytelling. One of them is Conrad Ricketts, who has produced reality shows like Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. Ricketts is also winner of two Emmy Awards for “Best Reality TV Show,” and has been nominated for an Academy Award. Ricketts, like Gold, will tech you among other things how to use video tools to tell you story. Know what a Sizzle Reel is? If not, Ricketts is going help you understand why you need one, and how to make one. Ricketts learned the art of story telling while convincing media company executives why they should spend millions of dollars to produce shows like Extreme Makeover.  It’s one thing, he told me in an interview, to learn to tell a story around the show, paint a picture of the plot’s narrative, and explain who the characters are. But creating a video helps this process go viral, because then “that person could take it up the chain and convince other people, and continue to get others excited about it…you really need more than a PowerPoint.”

You can sign up for the workshop here. There’s a cost to the workshop. But Gold is giving VentureBeat readers a 50% discount to the workshop, and to the live stream of the workshop if you can’t attend in person (use the promo code vb50). There’s a limited number of seats at the workshop, so you’d better sign up soon.

The event, “DEMO Enterprise Disruption: An Evening of Change & Innovation,” which takes place in San Francisco, is already full, so we can’t take anymore registrants. However, we’ll be running a live feed of the event on our home page. So tune in to VentureBeat starting at 6:15 pm PST to watch the evening’s events, including student demos of the latest cool enterprise technology, a VC Sage panel and a special demonstration by Fusion-io Chief Scientist and co-founder of Apple, Steve Wozniak.

I’m especially excited about Nimoy joining us. He’s famous for playing Mr. Spock in the original Star Trek series and for his roles in other entertainment vehicles such as Mission: Impossible, but he is renowned for his legendary creativity overall. He’ll be joining Wozniak on stage for a discussion about innovation. I’ll be moderating that session.

And afterward, we’ll be throwing a massive holiday party.

See many of you there tomorrow.

Here are more details on VentureBeat’s special event in SF on January 5 focused on innovation in the enterprise. Why enterprise? Well, it’s one of the sexier areas for entrepreneurs right now.

Sure, the consumer companies — Facebook, Zynga, Twitter — led the revolution. But now the disruptive social media and cloud computing trends are hitting the enterprise — and there’s a lot of action there.

As mentioned, the first part of the event in invite-only, and features an on-stage demonstration by Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple and currently chief-scientist at Fusion-io, who will be unveiling some cool stuff.

We’ll follow that up with a blowout bash that is open to a larger tech influencer audience, including entrepreneurs, developers, press and investors. (Register here fast, because we have limited capacity).

But there’s more to it than just an incredible party. We’re looking for you — college students, fresh-minded young entrepreneurs — to showcase the amazing enterprise technology emerging from trenches of Stanford, UC Berkeley, MIT and beyond. We’re giving six student-led startups the opportunity to present their ideas in front of a select group of influencers, venture capitalists, and media via an on-stage, six-minute demo.

Alongside the on-stage demo, students will receive:

• Script review with Rob Lee of Evergreen, DEMO’s production team and coaches
• Rehearsal time the day of with demo team to prepare
• Supplied display on site in tech Showcase
• Audience of 75 top venture capitals and press during VIP portion of event 5:30 -9pm. Doors then open to 400 members of the DEMO Alumni and tech community for the a rocking after party
• Demo streamed live on VentureBeat
• Demo videotaped and hosted on DEMO.com and DEMO’sYou tube Channel.
• Meet Steve Wozniak
• Feedback from VIP guests during private reception
• Two free passes to DEMO Spring
• Profile of the product on VentureBeat
• Team with the most views after 30 days wins a showcase sponsorship to DEMO

The best part? It’s free. Thanks to Fusion-io, who is a co-host of the event, and sponsor.

Applications are still being accepted. Requirement: You should be a student-run business and have a product focused on the enterprise.

For more information, check out this website.

The Fusion-io, DEMO and VentureBeat teams look forward to kicking off the New Year with this memorable event!

If you’re based in New York and looking to launch your next big tech product soon, join me for a private feedback session on Tuesday, December 13 with one of the city’s most respected venture capital groups, RRE Ventures.

VentureBeat is on a world tour, going country-to-country looking for exciting products. We’re looking for great stories to write about, of course. But we’re also on the prowl to find companies we want to invite to launch at the upcoming DEMO conference, held on April 17-19 in Silicon Valley. I’ve just been to London and Istanbul, and now I’m doing the U.S.A.

This New York session will give your company a great opportunity to pitch to, and receive friendly feedback from, a few RRE partners and myself, no strings attached. Then, if it makes sense to talk about launching at DEMO, we’ll introduce you to key members of the DEMO due diligence team.

For 21 years, DEMO has proven to be an incredible launch platform for startups, fast-growth mid-sized companies, and even large-cap publicly traded companies wanting to show off their new tech products to an influential media audience.

The DEMO scholarship program, which effectively makes DEMO free for most early stage companies and many mid-sized ones, was a big success in the fall when we introduced it. We’re keeping that program permanent. This way, we can continue to invite the very best companies bar none.

Over the years, names such as Google, Sun, Skype, Adobe, Palm, Netscape, Salesforce, E*Trade, TiVo, WebEx, Fusion-io (recently IPO’d), HP, SuccessFactors (just got bought for $3.4 billion) and many other hugely successful names in tech have launched some of their early products at DEMO. Now it’s your turn.

If you’re interested in presenting your company tomorrow, December 13 at the RRE offices in Manhattan, please fill out this form. If you are chosen, we will get in touch immediately to provide further details and instructions.

We look forward to seeing you!

Among other things, we’ll feature an on-stage demonstration by Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple and currently chief scientist at Fusion-io, which is co-hosting the event. Can’t say more at this point, but it will be pretty cool (press can request access here). That is a closed-door, invite-only event. But we’ll follow that up with a blowout bash: a New Year’s party open to anyone in the tech community of entrepreneurs, developers, press and investors (register here fast, because we have limited capacity).

We’re going to have a lot of fun.

But here’s another part of the main program earlier in the evening: We’re giving six student-led startups the opportunity to present their ideas in front of a select group of influencers, venture capitalists, and media. Applications are still being accepted. Requirement: You should be a student-run business and have a product focused on the enterprise. Let us know by the end of this week if you’d like to participate.

The evening, called “DEMO enterprise disruption: an evening of change & innovation,” is another way we’re extending the activities of DEMO, the big launchpad event that we co-produce twice a year.

For more information, check out this website.

The Fusion-io, DEMO and VentureBeat teams look forward to kicking off the New Year with this memorable event!

Our DEMO partners in Asia are doing an excellent job revving up for the event.

Now they’ve opened the application process for companies seeking to launch there Feb 28-Feb 2. Many of these will be startups from Singapore and from surrounding countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia. Some of them will be new companies that haven’t had the opportunity to present at such a large-scale event.

The DEMO Asia team will be holding auditions for those companies wanting to launch products there. If you’re a company interested in auditioning, send an email to the DEMO Asia team expressing your interest, and they’ll respond soonest.

December 8th and 15th will be the next audition dates.

DEMO Asia is also an excellent launchpad for companies throughout the world hoping to launch in the Asian marketplace. As part of the DEMO experience, we’ve also created a way where companies that launch in Asia also get access to the DEMO event in the U.S., and in DEMO Brazil. And vice versa. Companies that launch in the U.S. at DEMO, get the right for free access to the DEMO Asia and DEMO Brazil events. 

I’m really looking forward to seeing amazing new companies surface throughout this program. Things are looking very exciting in Asia!

VentureBeat is on a world tour, going country-to-country looking for exciting products. We’re looking for great stories to write about, of course. But we’re also on the prowl to find companies we want to invite to launch at the upcoming DEMO conference, held on April 17-19 in Silicon Valley. I’ve just been to London and Istanbul, and now I’m doing the U.S.A.

This New York session will give your company a great opportunity to pitch to, and receive friendly feedback from, a few RRE partners and myself, no strings attached. Then, if it makes sense to talk about launching at DEMO, we’ll introduce you to key members of the DEMO due diligence team.

For 21 years, DEMO has proven to be an incredible launch platform for startups, fast-growth mid-sized companies, and even large-cap publicly traded companies wanting to show off their new tech products to an influential media audience.

The DEMO scholarship program, which effectively makes DEMO free for most early stage companies and many mid-sized ones, was a big success in the Fall when we introduced it. We’re keeping that program permanent. This way, we can continue to invite the very best companies bar none.

Over the years, names such as Google, Sun, Skype, Adobe, Palm, Netscape, Salesforce, E*Trade, TiVo, WebEx, Fusion-io (recently IPO’d), HP, SuccessFactors (just got bought for $3.4 billion) and many other hugely successful names in tech have launched some of their early products at DEMO. Now it’s your turn.

If you are interested in presenting your company on December 13 at the RRE offices in Manhattan, please fill out this form. If you are chosen, we will get in touch immediately to provide further details and instructions.

We look forward to seeing you in New York!

Among other things, we’ll feature an on-stage demonstration by Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple and currently chief scientist at Fusion-io, which is helping underwrite this event. We’ll follow that up with a blowout party: It’s basically a New Year’s party and open to anyone in the tech community of entrepreneurs, developers, press and investors.

The evening, called “DEMO Enterprise — An Evening of innovation,” is another way we’re extending the activities of DEMO, the big launchpad event that we co-produce twice a year.

We’re also giving six student-led startups the opportunity to present their ideas in front of a multitude of the best venture capitalists, as well as key members of the media.

As of today, applications are being accepted from student-run companies, with a product focused on the enterprise, to partake in this event. If you’re interested, submit your company information here. The deadline for applications is December 23, 2011.

The event will feature discussions from some of the industry’s top innovators, offering insight into the future. The evening is definitely going to be one to remember.

For more information about the invitation-only launch event or the DEMO Innovation Party, open to DEMO alumni, the development community, press and VCs, check out the website.

The Fusion-io, DEMO and VentureBeat teams looks forward to kicking off the New Year at what will truly be a memorable event!

VentureBeat is on a world tour, going country-to-country looking for exciting products to be launched at the upcoming DEMO conference, held on April 17-19 in Silicon Valley. I’ve just been to London, and am currently in Istanbul, Turkey. Next, it’s the U.S.

This New York session will give your company a great opportunity pitch to, and receive friendly feedback from, a few RRE partners and myself, no strings attached. Then, if it makes sense to talk about launching at DEMO, we’ll introduce you to key members of the DEMO due diligence team.

We’re also simply looking for amazing companies to write about at VentureBeat.

For 21 years, DEMO has proven to be an incredible launch platform for startups, fast-growth mid-sized companies, and even large-cap publicly traded companies to show off their new tech products to an influential media audience.

The DEMO scholarship program, which effectively makes DEMO free for most early stage companies, and many mid-sized ones, was a big success in the Fall when we introduced it. So we’re going to keep that program permanent. This way, we can continue to invite the very best companies bar none.

Over the years, names such as Google, Sun, Skype, Adobe, Palm, Netscape, Salesforce, E*Trade, TiVo, WebEx, Fusion-io (recently IPO’d), HP and many other hugely successful names in tech have launched some of their early products at DEMO. Now it’s your turn.

If you are interested in presenting your company on December 13 at the RRE offices in Manhattan, please fill out this form. If you are chosen, we will get in touch immediately to provide further details and instructions.

We look forward to seeing you in New York!

Well, we’d love to meet you. London is the next city in my global search for great technology products. I’ll be arriving next week to attend the Tech City UK Entrepreneurs Festival on November 17 – 19.

I’ll be arriving from my visit to Istanbul, the latest stop in VentureBeat’s prowl around the globe. A similar trip to Asia will happen early next year, and South America soon after that.

We’re looking for great companies for two big reasons: First, we want to cover these companies in VentureBeat, where we have an expanding list of syndication partners that pick up our stories, from Reuters to the Washington Post. Second, we’re looking to invite the very best companies to the U.S. in April to launch at the DEMO conference in Silicon Valley, where some of the biggest tech players have launched over the past two decades.

We’ve got some momentum at DEMO. We’ve doubled the audience over the past two years, and we’ve created a scholarship program so that we can afford to bring the very best ideas regardless of their ability to pay. That, combined with the stellar audience — we invite the nation’s tech press, investors, and other tech influencers — makes it the most powerful launch event around, in my view. (BTW, Fusion-io is the latest DEMO alum success story. It launched at DEMO in 2008, went public this summer, and now has a market cap of almost $3 billion!)

While in London next week, I’ll be moderating a panel of a handful of the United States’ leading entrepreneurs during the “Silicon Valley Comes to the UK” portion of the event.

Afterward, VentureBeat will also be meeting privately with up to 10 local companies, offering feedback to them about their technology, business model and plans to expand. We’ll be meeting at the Excel Centre.

If you’re based in London and your company is interested, please fill out this form, and we will be in touch with further details shortly.

I’m looking forward to a great trip and am excited to see what happens in London at the Entrepreneurs Festival next week!

[Image via siliconroundabout.org.uk]

It’s the latest stop in VentureBeat’s global search for the coolest new technology. We’re also headed to London next week (more on that in a later post). Asia will happen early next year, and South America soon after that.

In Istanbul, I’ll be moderating a fireside chat with some key entrepreneurs, and hosting a pitch session for startups on the second day of the event. The 4iX event will feature the hottest Turkish startups in a variety of sectors, as well as leading global investors from more than a dozen countries including the U.S., Dubai, U.K., Germany, Greece, Russia, Jordan and of course, Turkey. It promises to be a key event for the regional tech industry.

It also comes at an intriguing time for Turkey, which is emerging as a regional powerhouse, and has been flexing its muscles recently in all kinds of new ways.

Afterward, VentureBeat will also be meeting privately with up to 10 local companies, to provide feedback to them about their technology, business model and plans to expand. This is part of our effort to find and invite the best companies globally to launch their products on the stage of DEMO, the conference we co-produce, to be held in April.

If you’re based in Turkey and your company is interested, please fill out this form, and we will be in touch with further details shortly.

At the end of the second day of 4iX, VentureBeat and DEMO will host a cocktail reception to celebrate the event.

I’m looking forward to a great trip and am excited to see what happens in Turkey at 4iX next week!

More than 100 people from New York’s burgeoning tech scene showed up October 25 for a startup party sponsored by VentureBeat and DEMO.

That’s not a bad turnout for an impromptu event organized just a week before. It’s a sign of the robust vitality and collegiality of the New York tech economy, which is one of the reasons VentureBeat was there in the first place.

VentureBeat editor-in-chief Matt Marshall and I were visiting New York this week on a mission to find out more about the city and its tech business. We talked with PR people, journalists and dozens of entrepreneurs. We spent time with VentureBeat’s intrepid New York staffers, senior editor Devindra Hardawar and staff writer Sean Ludwig. But the highlight of the week may have been the party at Katra Lounge, where a dozen brave entrepreneurs stood up in front of the crowd to give two-minute pitches for their companies.

We picked 10 of those startups to present ahead of time. While I kept strict track of the time (using the iPod Nano on my wrist), and the dozens in the crowd sipped their beverages, these 10 gave it their best shot.

• agrowculture.org — helps urban farmers find the right technology for their space whether it is a window sill, backyard, or rooftop, and allows them to sell to their community.
• Campalyst –  provides social media analytics software that helps brands to convert fans to paying customers.
• ChatID –  a universal platform that powers chat communication between businesses and consumers anywhere around the web
  and from any mobile device.
• Estimize — “First Call” for the social media age, allowing social finance users to aggregate their earnings & economic estimates and compete against each other.
• Ingenuitas — creates open source software and hardware for manufacturing inspection and systems and provides customization, data management, and analytics.
• Leebug — a SaaS solution for events that offers networking tools for attendees, branding tools for sponsors and revenue generating tools for event producers.
• LocalBonus — allows consumers to use their existing credit/debit cards as their loyalty card at local merchants.
• Paatle — the first global platform to simplify the way consumers rent, buy and sell real estate while enabling the entire real-estate ecosystem to collaborate.
• Shodogg — a patent pending technology enabling any smartphone to deliver media content to any connected screen without using wires or boxes.
• Surre.al –a location-based virtual world that interacts with the real world through augmented reality and the camera of your smartphone or tablet.

Missed your chance to come to the party? Don’t worry — VentureBeat will likely be holding more events in New York in the near future.

Photos: Devindra Hardawar/VentureBeat

This is a great chance to meet some of the VentureBeat writers and have an opportunity to connect with entrepreneurs and other movers and shakers. Or just come by and have a drink!

And if you have a new tech product in development (ideally one that you may like to launch at the next DEMO; April 2012 in Santa Clara, Calif.), we want you to come out and pitch your idea. We’ll be inviting 10 potential DEMO companies to present at the party. So if you’re looking to spread the word about your new startup, or get some good feedback from the VentureBeat staff, fill out this form, and we’ll be in touch shortly if you make the top ten.

If you’d just like to attend, please register here. The first 25 folks through the door are getting drinks on us. There’s a First Round Capital party that night as well, and many of us will head there afterward.

Looking forward to seeing you in NYC next week!