Last week, the folks from the DEMO conference came to Austin looking for some great new startups to launch at DEMO Fall ’09 in San Diego in September. The invite said over 160 people had RSVP’d and it seemed like everyone involved with tech startups in Austin was in attendance. Chris Shipley has been producing the DEMO conference for 15 years, and the Fall conference will be her last. Matt Marshall, the editor of Venture Beat, is taking over DEMO duties for Chris, and the two will probably be co-hosting the event in September.

Chris Shipley, Bryan Menell, JT Keating at the DEMO happy hour

In case you are just now reading this, don’t think you’ve totally missed out. You can still apply to launch your company at DEMO in the Fall.

One interesting change for the Fall conference is the introduction of the Alpha Pitch. Unlike the traditional DEMO 6-minute pitch, the Alpha Pitch is 60-seconds and it’s a less expensive route for companies that are not quite mature enough for a full launch at DEMO. If you’re not familiar with the DEMO conference, there are around 400 attendees that come to hear approximately 50 companies launch on stage. Attendees are some of the most notable venture capitalists, journalists, and analysts in the tech industry today. DEMO was a leader in demanding that companies abandon their slide decks in favor of showing the actual product. I guess that’s why it’s called DEMO and not SLIDES, right?