The Access Point

Off The Record at the DEMO Party

Last night the Access Team was out in force at the DEMO Alumni party hosted by Chris Shipley at the Rockit Room in the Inner Richmond. The bar was packed with more than 600 DEMO alumni, emerging technology companies, PR professionals, journalists, and filled with music from Don Clark’s band Off the Record.

We ran into a bunch of hot start-ups including MEDgle, a medical education website and Kosmix, also known as another generation of Wikipedia and engine that creates websites for every topic and company. Other companies in attendance included XOBNI, an Outlook inbox organizer and search engine and Pocobar, a mechatronics consulting firm that delivers Mechatronics, Embedded Systems, and Software Development solutions called Pocobar looking to exhibit at this year’s DEMO.

On the media side, Dean Takahashi of VentureBeat stopped by the event and shared his thoughts on E3 and his new position with the blog. He noted VentureBeat is in the process of creating a separate, Digital part of its site and in the process of building out these details and this content now. He seems to be enjoying his new position and ability to keep a more clear focus.

We also ran into Sam Diaz, previous reporter of the San Jose Mercury News and Washington Post. Sam recently returned to the Bay Area and is currently freelancing while he determines his next steps, planning to maintain a focus on technology. Sam strongly supports the movement from print to online and believes an even stronger idea would to cut back print edition to twice a week.

After 19 years, DEMO is going strong and still the hottest show in town. We’re looking forward to DEMOfall 08 in San Diego.

-- Kathryn Green

Fast Company, Slow Coverage

As you probably know by now, Rob Scoble (formerly of Channel 9, Scobleizer and PodTech fame) is joining the "traditional media" crowd with his move to Fast Company to start Fast Company TV. Michael Arrington wrote about it in December. Well, that time has come and Rob posted the details this week.

With print ad revenues are down, reporters are getting laid off left and right and are looking for just about any gig they can lay their hands on. And the old boys of print media are getting a new funky makeover for '08 (e.g. BusinessWeek's new formula) to try and stay above water.

I don't get this. If you work in a "fast industry," such as public relations that must always stay on top of what's going on in the industries we serve, reading hundreds of articles, blogs and press releases every day, on top of talking to reporters and counseling clients, do you have time to sit there and watch a 15-minute streamed video preceded by a 30-second ad? Probably not. The proliferation of RSS demonstrates our need to quickly scan a large amount of publications, blogs and headlines to get to the content that's important to us.

We don't have the time to watch video news at work — it just takes too long. So will Scoble be a success? We'll see, but I can't wait to see what Fake Steve Jobs says.