Iotum Wins DEMO God Award

Mar 23, 2006 | Inside: Industry

For iotum founders Alec Saunders and Howard Thaw, Wednesday February 8th, 2006 will be a date they will always remember.

The duo walked out of the DEMO 2006 conference that night with one of ten coveted Demo God awards as the “best of the best,” beating out 56 other start-ups from around the globe and topping new offerings from established companies that included AOL and Yahoo to grab the brass ring.

At the February 8th Awards Dinner, DEMO executive producer Chris Shipley announced the winners, who were selected for “their ability to clearly articulate the jaw-dropping significance of their debuting technologies despite the pressure of a jaded audience, and make-or-break level of expectation, and a glowing red six-minute countdown clock.”

For the two entrepreneurs it has been many countless days and sleepless nights, working on their new company, iotum, and its eponymous offering that really brings relevance to communications. Since early September they have been gearing up for DEMO 2006, the technology industry’s most significant “what’s next, what’s cool, what’s important” conference.

“Each year hundred of companies apply to be a DEMO presenter, and have to make it through Executive Producer Chris Shipley’s arduous and very competitive selection process. Only sixty eight made it this year,” said CEO Alec Saunders, who led the iotum presentation at Demo. “But being selected is the easy part. Getting the product ready, knowing you have a real date to introduce it, making sure it really works and preparing a presentation that can last no more than six minutes and still really tells your story is just a lot of work.”

At Demo 2006 iotum debuted Pronto Conference Calling, a conference call management application, which is a new part of the iotum Relevance Engine platform. Pronto Conferencing eliminates the need for special phone numbers, PIN codes or access codes to participate in a conference call. Pronto Conference Calling will be released as part of the company’s iotum Relevance Engine platform, the world’s first platform for assessing the relevance of any call, and routing it accordingly.

“Imagine a world where every call you receive is important,” said co-founder Howard Thaw. “iotum helps you choose which calls are important and which can wait, based on what you’re doing, and who is trying to reach you.”

“When we looked at the competition we were up against we knew that winning the award would be tough. We competed against some fantastic and very worthy companies,” said Alec Saunders. “Our co-workers, coaches and advisors prepared us well. But even so, when Chris Shipley called our names as Demo God winners we were still awestruck. It was like winning an Oscar.”

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