"But here’s my issue, and this is what I told Stone when I was asked: if this is really all about startups, and doing the best for startups, they wouldn’t be running it the same time as DEMO, and they wouldn’t be trying to "kill" DEMO as Jason Calacanis so nicely puts it. If they were serious about putting startups first, they would be focused only on creating more opportunities for startups to be discovered, and they’d allow their event to stand on its own merits without the need to constantly trash talk the opposition. Are we not better off as a web community having both DEMO and TechCrunch50?"
"But here’s my issue, and this is what I told Stone when I was asked: if this is really all about startups, and doing the best for startups, they wouldn’t be running it the same time as DEMO, and they wouldn’t be trying to "kill" DEMO as Jason Calacanis so nicely puts it. If they were serious about putting startups first, they would be focused only on creating more opportunities for startups to be discovered, and they’d allow their event to stand on its own merits without the need to constantly trash talk the opposition. Are we not better off as a web community having both DEMO and TechCrunch50?"
It would seem that both conferences could co-exist profitably and benefit the startup community. See also http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=154424