I never even got into see a presentation. The hallway was too good. Here’s my photos. Damn, I love my Canon 5D camera (thank you Maryam!). Imagine how good my images will be after I learn how to use it. Thomas Hawk or Scott Beale don’t need to worry about losing their status as best Web 2.0 photographers anytime soon. Hah.

I got a demo of Mint and it lives up to the hype someone gave it in my comment section this morning. Nice way to look at and manage your personal finances. Cubic Telecom did live up to the hype, too. I gotta get some of those phones for Maryam’s family in Iran. She pays so much for her mom to call back home.

There’s plenty of chatter over on TechMeme — I’m not going to try to live blog conferences anymore, it’s a thankless task and one that’s best left to people who actually like sitting in the halls. Me? I’m a hallway rat. CenterNetworks’ Allen Stern has a good wrapup and links to a few of the best posts..

Oh, anyone want to be on the ScobleShow? I’ll be hanging out in Half Moon Bay and have a few extra hours this week to do some interviews. Family is here, so it’s good to get out of the house.

Finally, in that picture above is Renee Blodgett, holding the camera. If you can identify all the other people in the picture you’ll be ready for some hallway networking at tech conferences in the future. Hint: a famous journalist/blogger, a wife of one of TechCrunch 40’s co-founders, and a famous lawblogger is there.

I’m in serious social networking fatigue. Or maybe that’s the overnight fatigue kicking in cause Milan woke up three times.

Here’s another Twitter competitor: Utterz.

Except it’s like Twitter with TwitterGram with a decent UI.

Here’s the condundrum: if a service has better features than Twitter but your friends aren’t on it, is it any good?

No.

Translation: I’m not trying out new social networks anymore until at least 100 people ask me to join.

Sorry to be so rude, but the bar has gone up. The window has closed. Yada yada yada.

Oh, I’m sneaking out of the house to go to TechCrunch 40 for a few hours. Don’t tell Maryam! 🙂

I’m seeing a LOT of hype about TechCrunch 40 being free for companies to demo at. Eric Norlin repeats that, for instance, on his blog.

That just isn’t true, if you look at it the right way.

Most companies I know are bringing five people to a show like TechCrunch 40 or Demo (which is next week). Shel Israel, in an interview that’ll be up this week on ScobleShow, told me that he recommends startups bring EVERYONE to shows like Demo or TC40 (everyone being someone involved in building the product/service, not support staff like secretaries or janitors). Why? Because the hallways is where the real networking is done and where the real stories get written about companies. If you have five people at a conference like this you’ll have five times more opportunities to get a hallway discussion started that’ll lead to a major blog post or an article in the New York Times (I’m writing a column for Fast Company and am already including at least one company from TechCrunch 40 in it, for instance).

At TechCrunch 40 those people need to buy a ticket. So that’s far from “free.”

Plus, many companies that are coming from outside of San Francisco region need to pay the travel, hotel, and meal costs. That’s not insignificant.

Even people who get in free (and there are always some of those) need to take time away from other things that are important and/or cover travel costs. That’s hardly “free” in my book.

So, what’s the most “free” for both attendees and demoing companies?

How about ScobleShow.com? I’ve had hundreds of companies on my show in less than a year. Far more than you’ll see at Demo or at TC40. Yet none of them, other than Seagate, paid to be there.

Also, no one at home pays to watch those demos and you don’t even need to travel to see them.

So, Eric, you’ve already got your “free for all” demo show! Even better, if someone gets boring you just turn them off!

Oh, and I patterned my demos after Chris Shipley’s Demo. No PowerPoints. Short demos (most of my demos are less than 10 minutes).

Every single company that’s been on my show should say thanks to Seagate. That’s the model for making a “free for everyone” demo show.