Let’s close out Boston “Innovation month” with a bang!

Venture Beat — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 11:49:31 -0400

Chris Shipley and I arrived in Boston today, the latest step in our campaign to find the best companies to launch at the DEMOfall conference in September.

We’re meeting at Vox, at 6pm. More details here. Make sure you register. First 40 people in the door get a free drink.

It so happens we’ve got excellent timing. We’ve arrived just in time to close out Boston’s “Innovation Month,” an initiative launched by Boston Globe Scott Kirsner. He proposed that June be used to mobilize the local tech community to remember what it takes to generate economic growth (good article about it in the San Jose Mercury News). Instead of wringing hands about layoffs at big companies like EMC, people need to remember it takes risky entrepreneurship — along the lines of what we have in Silicon Valley — to thrive. I just talked to Scott, and he’s happy with the debate it sparked. The month was already a time when several tech events were being held, and so it was a good time to do this. Check out the initiative’s twitter handle (neinno#) to follow the chatter. Kirsner said he’s planning to come tonight, too.

We’ve also invited Xconomy’s Bob Buderi and his team, along with Dan Primack’s PEHub to co-host the event. There are already about 100 people signed up, so this will be good networking.

We’re inviting any entrepreneurs or interested professionals who would like to learn whether they’re right for DEMO, the leading conference for emerging technology product launches. DEMOfall is being held Sept. 21-23 in San Diego.

Chris and I will also be holding meetings with entrepreneurs today and tomorrow. Just fill out a form (pick either launch or pitch), and drop me a note that you’d like to meet on one of those days, and we’ll get in touch and set something up.

Alumni companies at DEMO include Adobe Acrobat, Sun’s Java, Netscape Navigator, Placeware, the foundation for Microsoft Live Meeting, Palm Computing, WebEx, Salesforce.com, TiVo, E-Trade; VM Ware, Google’s first foray into mobile search, and many more.