I a big fan of Demo and the work that Chris Shipley has accomplished over her 13 years of stewardship with DEMO.  Now the torch is being passed to Matt Marshall the founder of Venturebeat, questions will arise as to the plans for the future of the DEMO brand.  Here is an interview (below) that Kara Swisher put up with Matt Marshall and Chris Shipley to answer those questions. Video below embedded and link to the BoomTown story here.

My Angle on this is that DEMO is a great brand, and that Matt will have no problem taking over the conference.  The challenge for Matt and IDG (who owns the conference and pays Matt a fee for running it) is to integrate the event and content into the Venturebeat site.  The DEMO site has failed to have any audience outside of the times during the event. If Venturebeat can maintain it’s editorial agenda and integrate the DEMO event then it should be a slam dunk. If not, Venturebeat is at risk of being a pay to play and will be accused of playing favorites to those companies that do DEMO. The other big issue is the conflict with Techcrunch. If Matt can balance all those things he should be ok. It seems like it’s a lot for Venturebeat to take on in a tough time for blog networks, but I’m sure the needed cash from IDG will help on that front.

Good Luck Matt and Venturebeat. We’ll be pulling for you here at siliconANGLE where we’ll have running commentary and opinion as this develops.