NYXSW Demo Bake Off Recap

Tonight I attended the NYXSW Demo Bake Off event hosted by Hashable and TechStars and a slew of other companies. I haven't been to an event in the NY tech scene in a really long time, and I'm glad I came tonight. The energy is here/back. Not that it went away, but as in every industry, there are definitely peaks when the bigger companies take off and grow ridiculously (hello foursquare) and then a new group of eager entrepreneurs get the time to work on their big idea hoping for the same.

The demos were good tonight. 2 minute rapid fire (strictly monitored by Miss Emily Hickey of Hashable) and a huge space to grab some beers and continue meeting the many people we'll be sharing ribs and beers and tacos with next week down in Austin.

I'm guessing the full list of demos is somewhere, but here are some of my favorites:

• imup4 - announce your intentions of interests to a feed of friends. as the site says, "you're up for something, your friends are too. now you know." So, say you post "I'm up for seeing The Kings Speech today" and then your friends who want to do the same could jump in. Great way for making plans and doing what you want to do. It's still in private beta, but you can request for an invite.
• GTrot - Social travel made easy. This is great. Share past trips and upcoming plans in seconds. See where your friends are going, what they recommend doing, who will be nearby. Facebook and foursquare integrated.
• Shelby.tv - recommended curated viewing of online videos from your Twitter stream. Keep an eye on this. It's still in early alpha, but trust me - once it goes live, you'll understand how cool it is, and how useful. Follow CEO Reece Pacheco @reecepacheco for more on it.
• CityPockets - FINALLY. Manage and keep track of all your daily deal vouchers from Groupon, Living Social, etc... I think Ive had a conversation with at least 20 people about how many deals have expired on them. Plus, an easier way to keep track of them besides GMail labels is needed. Curious as to how they get access to all of your deals (scrape emails?) but it's promising and useful.

The last wasn't a presenter, but someone I met there. Francisco Hui has launched a company called Interactess. If you're someone who wears t-shirt 5/7 days a week like SOME people I know, you'll love it. Check it out. Only one shirt now, but you'll see his creativity and the possibility of what the site could do.