Ontier and Evri Representing the Pacific Northwest at DEMO09 in Palm Springs
The Pacific Northwest has been well-represented in the desert over the past few days. DEMO09 started on Sunday, March 1 and wraps up on Tuesday, March 3 in Palm Springs, California. Portland-based Ontier presented their company on Monday, March 2 under the "Doing More with Less" banner - all demonstrators in that category had to demonstrate how their product leverages technology to increase productivity and efficiency. Ontier develops on-demand communications software, and introduced their new product Pixetell, which provides an interactive web- and video-conferencing tool with the convenience of email. A message can combine screen captures, voice, webcam, text and attachments.
“Pixetell is a powerful advancement in business communication technology that is timely given current economic conditions and reductions in travel budgets,” said Ontier CEO and founder, Sebastian Rapport. “Our solution fills a large gap between email and online meetings by enabling complex, conceptual, or visual information to be communicated much more quickly than with email, and without requiring a meeting.”
Sign up for the Beta here. Ontier formed in early 2008 and has kept mum about what they have raised from angel investors, but they gained several high-profile board members with deep pockets late in 2008.
Ontier gets high praise from DEMO: "There are always a couple of demonstrators that elicit a plain old gasp of "Cool!" and Ontier's Pixetell is one of them" - and DEMO experts estimate that Ontier's products could fill an available market worth almost three billion dollars.
Seattle-based Evri presents on Tuesday, March 3, in the "A Smarter Internet..." time-slot, promising to leverage the Internet even more effectively. Evri's tagline is "search less. understand more," and they strive to contextualize information on the Internet in sophisticated but natural ways. Evri makes connections between the content on Web pages, in a kind of "six degrees of Kevin Bacon" way that proves incredibly addicting, allowing different means of following strands of information. Have you ever wasted an hour clicking through Wikipedia articles that veer farther and farther from your original search? Prepare to spend some time on Evri. Their business model is to enable website publishers an opportunity to increase page views by more user engagement. What does DEMO have to say?
"Breaking from the semantic pack with its belief that "natural language" queries aren't, as it turns out, natural to humans, Evri is introducing an innovative new way to search, as well as individual user accounts that allow searchers deeper visibility on custom-designed topics. And with an API that allows developers to apply the Evri ontology to any piece of content, this company is poised to take a leading role in the search space."
Evri raised $8 million from Vulcan Capital in their Series A round.
In the spirit of being interactive, DEMO 09 is being broadcast in real time. Follow along all day on March 3. A very active aggregated Twitter Feed of audience reactions can be found here, in order to develop "a rich interactive conversatin about the innovations launching on the DEMO stage," says DEMO09 Executive Producer Chris Shipley.
The DEMO conference has been called a "launch pad for emerging technologies," and strives to showcase new technologies and companies. Over two days, attendees can watch 70 six-minute presentation about brand new products and innovations, often being revealed for the first time. DEMO companies have traditionally done very well post-DEMO debut, often going on to be acquired by tech giants or changing their industry with new technology. Interested in applying to launch at DEMOfall 09 in San Diego, September 21-23? Click here.
