This thing is like a well oiled machine. There is a rhythm, and its really clear that arriving prepared is critical.

Beth had us at a team breakfast at 9am, which was leisurely -- except for the fact that we've all be up for hours reading blogs, and all we can talk about is how great the YouTube announcement is. The basic take of the team that the announcement validates the space -- since its now clear that UGV will be an advertiser supported medium -- and that the attention that YouTube brings to UGV and Advertising can only drive up demand for UGV at the site level, demand for higher quality (read, "curated") content, and the need for new solutions and tools for both creators and sites. Overall -- we feel very much in the middle of the whole space, and like the chapter in the life of this start up with be a ton of fun.

Speaking of fun -- the DEMO stage is fun. That's the only word for it. It's high tech, the crew is organized and friendly, and the whole vibe is definitely about helping you do your best. Oh, wait, i jumped ahead.

At 11am -- we headed to the Ballroom to get our first look at the stage, and the set up. it's huge. A big room. and lots of chairs. Maybe they'll be people in all of them -- a scary thought. Ok, so when our turn comes, they take our laptops and the stage Emeri and Simon in assigned spots on the stage, each with stickers to label their laptops for the proper tech hook ups. If you've ever been at a tech conference where the AV didn't work right, you know how much that can suck. Clearly Chris Shipley and her team have decided long ago to never let that happen, so the tech is planned down to the second (really!) and the rehearsals are serious. I'm not sure what happens if you miss your rehearsal, but i bet that you don't get on the stage without one.

So, with just six minutes to tell the Magnify story -- here goes.

I can't say it was easy... but after weeks of fine tuning the message, it went pretty well.

After the rehearsal (and some kind words from the crew) we're off to a well-deserved Starbucks break.

Heck, they have Starbucks in the lobby. Iced coffee in January. Ah, this is a bit of heaven. More conversation about the market, and of course, everyone is on wireless in the lobby: Emeri is working with sites, Simon is actually writing code -- changing the nav on the home page and fixing up some back end bits and pieces that we knew there'd be time for in the few days before the conference. We can't know what kind of traffic spike we may experience post DEMO, but we have to assume that some folks we care about will swing by for a look. So there's no detail too small.

Speaking of details -- the T-shirts came in. We knew we wanted some Magnify Swag for DEMO, even if only we could wear it (DEMO has a pretty firm no swag policy). But the first round from Cafe Press were kind of muddy. (the black t shirt process is still very beta). So we went back to plain old silk-screen T's -- and the result is pretty cool. We'll make some sort of plan to start sending T's to Magnify Site creators who do amazing stuff with the platform or content -- just not sure what the actually plan is yet -- so hold on, more on that post-DEMO.