The three people you need to hear from at DEMO, September 13-15

If you’re a player in technology, you’ll want to come to DEMO, our big technology conference scheduled to hit Silicon Valley on September 13-15.

I’ll be executive producer and host again. But it’s everyone else that you really need to meet — from our speakers to your fellow attendees. Just about every major technology company and media outlet will be in the room. It’s the perfect setting for feasting on the industry’s intellectual riches, striking partnership deals, raising funding, or getting publicity for your company.

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At the core of the event are the 60 fresh products that will be launching which we’ve selected from around the world, from whom we’ll pick a winner to receive our $1M DEMO media prize. I traveled from Singapore to Russia this year looking for the biggest and most disruptive products. Although it’s the first time we’ve taken the event to innovation’s heartland, we’ve got more companies from outside Silicon Valley coming to DEMO than ever before. Because we’re bringing the world’s best thinkers together at technology’s nerve center, there will be no better hallways in which to do deals. It’s just a couple of weeks away, so make sure you register now.

We’ve got a significant line-up of speakers, including SAP co-chief executive Bill McDermott (above left); LinkedIn CEO Jeff Wiener; Groupon CEO Andrew Mason; Twitter cofounder and now Square CEO Jack Dorsey (below right), and Google President of Enterprise Dave Girouard. They’ll help you grapple with the five major themes we’ve outlined for debate this year: mobile, social media, consumer Web, cloud, and enterprise technology.

Others speakers include high-level executives and chief information officers from companies and organizations ranging from Microsoft to Clorox, Kaiser Permanente and the City and County of San Francisco. Mix these folks up with the Valley’s top venture capitalists and corporate development executives, and we’re talking about the ultimate, intimate networking event for some 800 top movers and shakers.

As before, we’ll have select dinners in the evenings for CEOs and dealmakers, as well as for CIOs discussing the latest trends. We’ll host the major debates from how collaboration and cloud technologies are transforming the enterprise to how companies are integrating mobile into their offerings now that Apple’s iPhone and Android are bursting into the workplace. Scott Stanford, banker with Goldman Sachs, will lead a discussion about mergers and acquisitions.

I’m particularly looking forward to the chat with McDermott, who took over leadership of SAP earlier this year. SAP is the world’s leading provider of business software to the Fortune 1000, and is now focused expanding to mid-sized companies. His company is also obsessed with the shift to mobile.

Dorsey, who is still chairman of Twitter, will be filling us in on experiences he had at that fast-growing company, and how those have informed what he’s doing now at Square in mobile transactions.

Groupon, founded by Andrew Mason (left), remains one of the hottest startups in the country, I quickly learned through my travels this year to places like Boston, Austin, LA, San Diego, Seattle, New York and Washington. In almost every city, I met at least two or three copycats hoping to tweak Groupon’s model or do an end-run around by aggregating local deals. We’ll hear from Mason about what makes Groupon special, and how it maintains its lead.

Stay tuned for more updates. But make sure you sign up soon, to secure your place for the action.

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