Well here we after a great lunch, and mini-demo booth hall. It’s time for LaunchPad 2007, where four new companies are announcing either themselves or a new product. They have 6 minutes each to talk about what they’re doing, and then there are two analysts to comment on their immediate and unfiltered reaction. I was the moderator … here’s the notes I took during the presentation.

Collanos
Franco Dal Molin is presenting, the CEO of Collanos
Collanos is about team collaboration across organizational boundaries. You need an environment that is optimized for cross-organizational team work.
– Email, on-demand solutions, and enterprise IT solutions are three categories … but these current options fall short. There’s no context, limited to online, and poor time and cost
– Collanos takes a completely different approach … a peer-to-peer workspace, for working with peers. Invite members. Whatever you do in your environment is being synchronized in the background. No central server required. All of the data is fully redundant. It is on your machine, for offline access.
– The UI includes a member list, virtual folders, documents and file types, and an embedded discussion. You are notified of who makes changes and when, and you can revert to previous solutions
– Today … we are announcing … Voice Services … for calling team members from within the workspace. Includes a multi-protocol instant messaging … there are some enhanced services that cost some money, eg, call-in and call-out.
– We are a game changer … collaboration happens in a grid, not in an island.
– At of today, add voice and video to what’s currently on offer.
– Phone will be released in 10 more days.

David Coleman
– Interesting that you talk about what others don’t do, and what you do do.
– What about security … particularly like HIPAA
– Voice is a good addition.

Stowe Boyd
– Not sure that the world needs another tool to d othis
– Lots of ofther companies have tried to do this, eg, Groove
– Will ultimately need a server side addition
– Phone … still maintaining the old, top-down member oriented

Clarizen
Avi Nowogrodski is presenting, the CEO of Clarizen
On-demand, collaborative project management for your business. Want to help companies deliver success
– Business drivers … need to deliver to market quickly, with efficient operation
– What has changed in project management? Projects are no longer managed locally, used to be slow, not very fast
– Clarizen … real adoption, real teamwork, real knowledge … combination of enterprise software and Web 2.0. Gets smarter as more people use it.
– Get a 360 degree view of projects and tasks … can get better decisions on time. Businesses need a clear and accurate picture of projects
– People still need to collaborate within projects, and across them
– Collaboration is more than information sharing … need a way of sharing expertise in context to a document, a task, a docment, a discussion, etc.
– Drive adoption through participation
– Offer unique email integration. Users can report on progress without having to log into the system
– Can incorporate the know how of how managers track projects … through templates
– Market feedback … very good.
– Go to http://www.clarizen.com to register for the beta.

Stowe Boyd
– Many have tried this before … this is very similar to what eRoom was doing many years ago.
– Not a new idea

David Coleman
– These are 1.5 tools, not 2.0 tools. Not really all the way there.
– We’ve done a lot of work on distributed project management tools … for the tool to make the most success, you need to cut down the time of interaction between tasks, through cutting cycle time around tasks.

LiquidTalk
Dave Peak is presenting; the CEO of LiquidTalk
– How many people are checking their email right now? Why is this .. .out of the office, we have lots of work despite of that, few “cracks” in the day to get work done
– Three problems …
– … (1) we’re out of the office. You can’t collaborate with ways of interaction. It’s hard to get knowledge on the go.
– … (2) talent acquisition. We need to meet the Web 2.0 generation of people … new cool things, have to meet them on their terms
– … (3) roles are getting tougher … rising rep turnover, more dependent of star employees

The solution … turning knowledge into a more mobile format. Can listen on demand.
– leverages the human voice.
– showing a demo … a set of files on the go. Can sync to his device. There’s an inbox for things that can be pushed to him from others.
– Dave videos himself this morning to tell his employees what’s going on today.
– Can also record via telephone … to all that is going on

David Coleman
Would love to see a description in one slide, rather than 5 or 6. More than iTunes for Business … more a DVR for business training. Time shifts the conversation
– Listen to podcast quite often from people, and find them useful and interesting. Perhaps not a transfer of knowledge

Stowe Boyd
Expected something different from what the build-up was … has the sense that features should be integrated into something else … a plug-in for Salesforce.com, for example
– Seems like too much work … needs to be part of something larger.

KnowNow
Sam Weber is presenting, he is the VP of Technical Services at KnowNow
– spent lots of time in his past working on things that other people don’t want to use.
– It is user driven.
– The status quo is insufficient … email is overused (50% is junk), static portals are broken, search isn’t the answer. SharePoint is particularly difficult to use due to sub-portals
– Imagine … a day when the inbox isn’t a junk drawer. Needs change … and results change. Information finds you. 10 results … not 200,000. How about no search button?
– How to deliver on this … Live Information Management Services … get access to source systems … and then do aggregation, filtering / matching, security, transformation, alerts / notification, and content-based routing. Not an RSS only company.
– Launching KnowNow Live to the enterprise today. KnowNow seeks to bridge the gap between status quo and customer needs.
– KnowNow Live … looks like iGoogle. Adds in SharePoint sites, project portal, process reporting. Easy to add new content. Can view content inline.

Stowe Boyd
Wants more demo, and less slides / pitch. All for the core idea of making things coming to us.
– See a hard slog battling the large enterprise content management companies. Are also being nibbled at by page flakes.
– Likes the message, but see a hard road ahead

David Coleman
Met KnowNow about 18 months ago. Tracking a trend for aggregation … that’s where the money will be made. Individual functions will be subsumed by other functions
– Question … is it 9x times better than email?

Audience Vote
KnowNow … 33%
LiquidTalk … 27%
Clarizen … 21%
Sanjay … 15%
Collanos … 2%

Addendum
Cool … documentary evidence that I didn’t drone on so much to put Eric to sleep.