Today's blog is part of our new Friday series, "The road to BriForum."

Now that we launched the BriForum 2008 Chicago website, Emily and I can work more closely with companies participating in this year's BriForum DEMO lab (me from the technical standpoint and Emily from the logistics standpoint). Meanwhile Gabe will be busy building the prototype of our recording appliance (a topic for a future Friday post) and Lara will be running the business from Pennsylvania.

So there will be four people in four different states trying to engage and keep track of maybe 100 companies and contacts scattered around the world. I hate to say it, but we need a CRM system! To that end, February 6, 2008 marked the end of our system of spreadsheets and voicemails. Even though a little piece of me died when we wrote the check to the CRM vendor, we now (purposefully) use a CRM system . 

One of the most beneficial aspects of implementing a CRM system when no current system exists is that it causes you to really focus on your processes and your information, and to think about what's important to you and how you do it. To that end, one of the things we have to do each year is to come up with a very specific list of companies we want to talk to about participating in our DEMO Lab at at BriForum.

As we all discussed this we realized that our "target" list from last year had actually shrunk in some ways! The "problem" was that many of the vendors who had supported BriForum in the past were being acquired by other companies. I counted a few off the top of my head. Of the 12 vendors that exhibited at BriForum 2007 Chicago last year, four of them were acquired by larger companies. What an amazing statistic! Of course we don't really "pick" the vendors who exhibit at BriForum--it's more of a first-come, first-served basis (we sold out of both attendee tickets and vendor exhibit slots last year in Chicago). I think the fact that we're selling out really says a lot about the quality of BriForum and the quality of the vendors that come. (Or maybe it just means we need a bigger venue?)

Here's the list of BriForum 2007 Chicago exhibitors who were acquired by other companies last year:

• Altiris was bought by Symantec
• enteo Software was bought by FrontRange Solutions
• Neoware was bought by HP
• Provision Networks was bought by Quest Software

So if you want to meet the hottest, most cutting edge, and potentially fastest expanding application and desktop virtalization in 2008, you know where to go next June! (These companies are always looking for talented employees, and you know a BriForum attendee would be "pre-qualified" on the basis of their BriForum attendance alone. :) And if you're a vendor who wants to know where to meet the cool IT folks who "get it," the BriForum 2008 Chicago DEMO lab is open for reservations. (But don't think that you'll get acquired right away if you come. I mean it took Aurema and Softricity, both exhibitors at BriForum in 2005, a few years to be acquired by Citrix and Microsoft, respectively.)

BriForum 2008 Chicago will be June 16-18, 2008, at the Chicago Navy Pier. Early-bird registration is open now. If you'd like to give an independent presentation on a technical topic, our call for papers is open through March 31. So far Ericom, eG Innovations, and Quest Software (one of the companies who made an acquisition last year) have secured spots in our DEMO lab. We'll be announcing many more over the next few weeks.