Demo ’10 begins in Boston — calling all awesome startups

It’s been a few weeks since Demo took San Diego by storm, and I posted a few days ago about a few of the cool things that happened to some of the demonstrating companies.

More on that in a sec. But here’s a reminder that we’re gearing up to do it all over again with DEMO ’10, March 21st-23rd in Palm Desert, CA.

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The applications are already rolling in, which means it’s time for myself and other VentureBeat team members to meet the next wave of entrepreneur applicants, in other words YOU!

Start your DEMO application here and meet me next Thursday, the 22nd, in Boston’s Vox bar. If you’re one of the first 40 folks to show up, you’ll get a free drink (but register here). There I’ll be joined by our co-host Bob Buderi of XConomy. Bob will be coming off a Wednesday XConomy conference on New England venture capital, featuring an intimate conversation with VC legends Peter Brooke, chairman of NVCA, and Terry McGuire, managing director of Polaris Ventures. Grab the few remaining tickets here and we’ll talk about it all on Wednesday. Most importantly though, I’d like to learn about your startup’s vision for DEMO ’10. I’m taking meetings on Friday too.

In fact, we found several companies in Boston when we visited before the last DEMO, and one of them was Pinyadda, which became one of the first “Alpha Pitch companies” — getting 90 seconds to pitch in front of the full DEMO audience of investors, corporate development executives and media. As mentioned last week, they said they had a great time at the conference. They took home a “DEMOGod” award.

For those of you unfamiliar with Pinyadda (we’ll likely be writing more about them), the company’s product allows you to use friends and other trusted sources to get information relevant to you. It calls its approach “personalized information networks” (hence the name pinyadda). The startup’s VP of Product, Austin Gardner Smith, noted that their decision to come to DEMO started as a desire for the company to plug into the West Coast, Silicon Valley network of startups and VCs. In retrospect, Smith told us, the quality and helpfulness of DEMO attendees created a collaborative environment that helped the startup get different use cases for its product and explore new possibilities for its beta release (something we heard from several others, including 80legs.)

Smith’s main advice for DEMO candidates: Get your pitch down. Take it from the winner: Smith pointed out his team used the pitch to drive traffic to their pavilion display, not as a one-time chance to pitch their product. DEMO conference SEO — we like it!

Since DEMO, the startup has been gearing up for its beta release. We’re looking forward to watching them grow, and want to see them back at DEMO. I expect to see many more stories like Pinyadda’s emerge throughout DEMO ’10.