walkah: DemoCampToronto16

I finally made it out to another DemoCampToronto last night (my first since presenting back at DemoCampToronto13) and my first at the Toronto Board of Trade. I have to say, I'm continually amazed at how these events have continued to grow. Major congrats to the "stewards" (c'mon, guys, you're the organizers ... really) : David, Jay, Joey, Leila and Greg.

That said, the character of the event sure has changed... grown up? Sold out? Not sure. They're certainly *big*. There's lots of time spent on the sponsors (who's generosity I don't mean to belittle). There's little time for questions to the demo'ers. Few of the new people stuck around for drinks after the event and there were people in suits!?! Maybe I'm crazy, but perhaps the disruptive, un-conference events need to get disrupted?

There were some interesting demos/talks last night. My highlights were:

• SlashID : nice to see another Canadian identity startup. I have to admit, their demo wasn't great, but talking with Zeev afterwards was interesting. They took some pot-shots at OpenID which made for good debate. Enough to warrant a post of it's own... to be continued...
• ShapeShop (Ryan Schmidt) has a pretty awesome looking 3d modeling tool and was able to at least bring a laugh or two to otherwise well-behaved crowd.
• Mark Kuznicki: *rocked* the ignite format with Co-creating the Creative City. Good timing and good execution on a topic heavily laden in it's own jargon. I encourage you to check out his slides for all the missing info he wasn't able to get into his allotted 15 seconds per slide!

I will say, it was great to see everyone and it was really nice to not have to drive home afterwards ;) See y'all again in January (I hope).