Announcing the Gluecon Demo Pods
One of the truly amazing things that we've been able to do at Gluecon over the past 2 shows (last year and this year) is to give away free space to early stage startups. The reason we've been able to do this is simple: Alcatel-Lucent *understands* how big tech companies should do marketing. They understand that it's not about "owning" the stage at a show. They understand that the power of the API (which crosses the cloud, big data and mobile) is that it is a technology that is ALL about community. They understand that supporting the community is the single best thing they can do.
And that's what they do with Gluecon. With Alcatel-Lucent's support (it was actually their idea), we have the Gluecon Demo Pods. These are 12 pods, chosen by judges, given freely to applicants. They must be early stage companies. If accepted, the pod comes with everything they need to demo their wares. All they have to do is get there.
But it doesn't end there. Once you've made it into the Demo Pods, you'll find that all gluecon attendees will be voting for their favorite amongst the bunch (via a handy Twilio app). The votes are tallied, and the winner is picked. At which point, Bart Lorang (the CEO of last year's winner, FullContact) will pass the mantle on the keynote stage to this year's champ (who will then go on to do amazing things, be a judge for next year's demo pods, and pass the mantle).
So it is with great fanfare and imaginary drumrolls that I give you this year's twelve demo pods (courtesy of Community Underwriter, Alcatel-Lucent):
It was an incredibly strong set of applicants this year, and the 12 that were chosen are something special. I hope you'll give a big thank-you to Alcatel-Lucent for helping us to do this, and then utilize early bird pricing (which ends April 15th) to get yourself registered and come meet this amazing group of startups.