On Monday night, the fine folks of RIoT hosted their annual “Demo Night” at the Raleigh Convention Center. The event drew a large crowd of attendees from around the ecosystem who were keen to enjoy up-close looks at about 25 demonstrating startups.
Scheduled such that it followed a day of programming from the All Things Open conference, Demo Night began with brief remarks from RIoT Executive Director Tom Snyder, in excellent orange pants.
Tom then introduced Kate Pearce, the Executive Director of Raleigh’s Dix Park, who gave a presentation on the numerous ways in which technology is being used to both preserve and improve the park. The suggestion—and it was an easy one to buy into listening to her—was that Raleigh is now home to one of the country’s most innovative park spaces.
Following Pearce’s presentation, the crowd was led from the Convention Center ballrooms downstairs to where the exhibiting startups had been setting up their tables to populate an expo hall. This, essentially, was the heart of the event. Founders were able to demonstrate their ideas, products, and services, interact with attendees, and, as is traditional at RIoT’s Demo Nights, earn “Larry Bucks” (which are handed out to registered attendees like Monopoly money to be “invested” at favorite tables).
We won’t list all of the exhibiting startups here, but Team GrepBeat saw everything from a tiny chip that can “smell” potential disease in plants, to the foundations of an automated on-campus delivery system, to an endearing little terrain survey robot that was navigating the expo floor at its leisure.
A handful of startups GrepBeat has written about in the past were present, including CareHome Health Solutions, Focus Cubes (complete with an actual color-changing cube; see slideshow), Nearby Nearby, OsRostrum, Phase Dock, Scale Social, Tulsi Cybersecurity, and Social Cascade. And a few others that were demonstrating may soon be at the center of fresh GrepBeat features.
The evening was also made all the more enjoyable by the presence of Bingo Bard, which doubled as a presenting startup and a kind of service provider for the event. This Apex-based team basically designs event-specific bingo cards whose squares can be filled out via various forms of engagement. In this case, that meant playfully incentivizing attendees to visit other booths and interact with companies.
Congrats to RIoT and all participating startups on a great Demo Night! Below, you can check out a slideshow of photos from the event.
