The Digital Debutants' Ball

"I've got a real company," Hickey says. "I have 10,000 business users, and last year I had $13 million-plus in revenue." He is not blown away by the event's cachet. "Once you get outside of it, nobody cares." Nor is he impressed by the luxury of the conference's locale: "This could just as easily be at the airport Marriott."

As night envelops the Westin LaPaloma, a welcome dinner has begun by the pool. A local combo plays hits from an era when the software developed by most of the millionaires at this party was still in beta. As the debutants gather to mingle with digital high society, they are alert for omens.

Nature has conveniently provided two. In the eastern sky, an eclipse of the moon darkens the Sonoran Desert like a screensaver. To the west, the comet Hale-Bopp smears its luminescent pigment across the horizon. A venture capitalist informs her table that her husband, an astronomer, says the comet's tail is not necessarily "behind" the comet at all. That streak we see is made up of gases being sucked into the sun -- which is now actually in front of the comet.

This great omen, used for centuries as an augury of good fortune or cataclysm, is facing forwards. No, backwards. Whatever.

The sun does not rise in Tucson; it's suddenly there, as if someone had reached up and yanked a lamp chain. Day One of PC Forum is under way, and in the Canyon Ballroom, the 600 attendees wait attentively for the future to be revealed to them.

The stage resembles a Southwestern living room -- branches of mesquite leaning against the proscenium, a cow's skull lolling on the floor. Dyson curls up at one end of the sofa, bare feet tucked under, college-girl style. Panelists are invited up, two and three at a time, to have a nice, long chat with her.

At the back of the darkened auditorium, the debutantes stand waiting to make their entrance. The speakers' voices boom through the PA system; their faces fill a screen that extends over an entire wall. And then it is simply time. The clock strikes noon, and Michalski invites the debutantes to do their best, in five minutes, to entice audience members to attend their demos.

Scott Moody spends his first minutes behind the podium explaining why he can't stand to be behind a podium. "I like to jump around a lot when I present," he protests.

Stewart Padveen from HotOffice attempts to cram every screen shot of his product into his five minutes -- which soon grow to six minutes, then seven. ("OK, you're saying to yourself, 'Another email client, big deal!'") He introduces HotOffice's primary venture capitalist, Jim Kollegger, who uses an ill-advised metaphor to explain how, unlike most Internet software companies, HotOffice is really, really going to make money. "Women want to talk about relationships," he says, leaning into the mike. "Men want to have them." Several members of the audience hiss.

But the demo gods take their true vengeance on Richard Bruce, copresident of PlaceWare Inc., who stumbles through his slides as if it's the first time he's seen them. He keeps walking away from the mike. A live cross-country audio feed adds a sophisticated touch to his presentation -- but the feed won't stop when he tries to hurry on to the next slide. He keeps clicking the disconnect button, but to no avail. Bruce finally looks up at the control booth and begs the techies inside to pull the plug.

Then it's all over. The audience rushes out to the pay phones, the restrooms, the poolside Tex-Mex lunch. The debutants, blanched and slightly wilted from the heat of the lights, look relieved to have vaulted the first hurdle of their ordeal. Now they have to survive their afternoon demos.

It's time for the main event:

a series of hour-long demos in the hotel's small breakout rooms -- or what Alex Knight, former Microsoft executive and now a consultant for Throw and other high-tech startups, affectionately calls "the petting zoo."

Peter Friedland, of Intraspect Software, is welcoming a small audience to his product's first public demo: "Good afternoon. It has taken $3.5 million in venture capital to get us to this meeting. I want you all to know that I'm wearing new pants."

Next door, the PlaceWare team has recovered from its rocky noontime performance to give the most ambitious and potentially dangerous demo of the conference. Their product, Auditorium, lets large audiences view and hear a speaker's presentation, ask questions, chat, and even vote -- all over the Internet. The demo is taking place in Roseville, California. A product service manager at PlaceWare's beta-customer, Hewlett-Packard, is conducting a live conference with multiple customer service agents -- displaying interactive product diagrams and answering questions using real-time audio. This time, the presentation goes flawlessly.