Recent Technorati emigrant Niall Kennedy hosted a swanky demo session last night at the Westin St. Francis. This is the second of his SF Tech Sessions. Chicago startup Blish.com bought the room, the drinks (for the record, I stuck to beer and coffee), and the pricey salmon platters.


Niall basks in the light of a thousand IPOs.

One of the less lucky presenters. This fish's business plan was deemed a menace to the economy.


Years after his lounge-piano career, Brian Sherrill still hasn't changed his clothes.

The glitz screams "dot-com bubble," but Blish founder Brian Sherrill said he'd rented the room sight unseen. "I thought it would be some normal hotel conference room. Then I came up here and went, 'Whoa.'" Still, every dot-commer there wanted Blish to sponsor their next party.

After the jump, more gilded hotel shots and some demo snarks.

Photos: the omnipresent Scott Beale [Laughing Squid]
Notes more meaningful than mine: Notes from SF Tech Session [Rajlogs]


"Pssst...I hear Kevin Burton bought someone in this room." "I'm right here, dude, and I didn't buy anyone." "See, it's so secret even Kevin doesn't know."


Skobee presenter Noam Lovinsky: "It's a consumer service, but I'm sure we can, uh, leverage your paradigmatic edge competency across the enterprise."

Skobee's the first to present. You use it to organize outings big and small with your friends. Looks handy.

The second speaker presents Vast, a topical ad search engine. For Vast's dating profile category, he says, "We had to pull a lot of results out. Thousands of Russian brides, lots of porn..." TailRank's Kevin Burton: "Can I get a disc of that data set?"


Mozes CEO Dorrian Potter: "And with enough seed money, I could afford a shirt with a collar."

Potter's mobile-bookmarking site Mozes.com has tags, of course, but not that hippie share-at-will kind: they sell tags as keywords. The peanut gallery around me is not impressed.

Finally, two reps from Songbird shuffle in. They're over an hour late, but they present their product.

This image was lost some time after publication.


"Ohhh, hey, hadn't noticed that bug — er, feature — before."

Songbird is part browser, part media player. One of the demoers shows off the song display. And the sliding tracker. And the volume slider. Blogger Eran Globen: "Gee, I wonder if it does stereo."

Four companies, three of them dot-coms, and a dot-com sponsor. A posh 32nd-storey location. An audience of dot-commers and startuppers. Keep saying it: There is no bubble, there is no bubble, there is no bubble...