In an environment that is meant to be the breeding ground that show cases the best of start ups the conferences that dot the calendars throughout Silicon Valley and the rest of the tech world the opening shots of a Tolkien One Conference to rule them all has been sounded.

In an interview on c|net news.com Michael Arrington came out with guns a blazing by declaring that “Demo needs to die” suggesting that that the DEMO model was just to old school in order to compete in today’s startup marketplace. While Michael blamed the overlap of the SEMO conference with his own TechCrunch50 conference on mundane things like it being the only dates that they could get that would support the projected 1,000 to 2,000 people expected at TechCrunch50. Just because they happened to overlap the days that the DEMO 08 conference was running was just to bad.

Meanwhile the folks over at DEMO 08 while not surprised by the competition wonder why it is that an organization; like TechCrunch, would be creating an environment where startups are doing nothing more than shouting into a hurricane of conference noise where no-one is a winner in the long run.

TechCrunch might be gunning for the popularity of DEMO and looking to become the premier conference for startups but the simple fact is that it is the startups that are going to lose out in the long run. After all with two major tech oriented conferences trying to get the best of the best in the startup world to show their wares the real news is going to be centered around the battle for attention being fought by DEMO 08 and TechCrunch50.

Startups are further hampered by the fact that both conferences require that any startup being included in the lineup can not have shown at any other conference. It is getting to the point that the startups are becoming nothing more than the ropes around the boxing ring where monetized egos fight it for dominance in a field that really is about nothing more than bragging rights and money.

In the end like most fights it is the promoters who take home the money and the startups are left bloody and bruised wondering what just happened and what is next.

[tags]TechCrunch, TechCrunch50, DEMO 08, startups, conferences[/tags]

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