And the winner for best new artist....Iotum

Iotum scored the big prize at Demo yesterday, one of ten companies to win the Demo God Award. That's a pretty impressive accomplishment, and hats off to Alec Saunders and Howard Thaw for bringing their vision this far along. Lots more kudos are in order, and you can follow these in the links in this post. Now it gets real interesting, as they move into fund raising mode to make their Relevance Engine relevant to you and me.

Watching the Grammys off and on last night, I couldn't help think of how Alec and Howard must feel getting this kind of a rush. Alec isn't quite Bono - now that he's a Demo God, that makes him a demi-god in the IP world. But when you see him at the next conference, don't expect to see him in leather and orange tinted wraparound sunglasses - he's not that kind of a guy! At least I think not.

Just a few things to pass on for reference about Iotum's win...

- Here's a full list of the 10 Demo God winners

- Alec Saunders' acceptance speech - well, this is what he would have said...

- Andy Abramson - more well-deserved kudos there - he has been a real driver behind Iotum's momentum, and he's gotta be a happy guy today too

- Jeff Pulver's congrats posting. Jeff had a very good day yesterday. Not only is he an advisor and investor in Iotum, but he's also the Von in Vonage.

- Mathew Ingram of our hometown Globe & Mail ran a nice piece about Iotum today. Unfortunately, it ran too early to include the news of their win, but I just love the fact that Iotum's story got more ink than Vonage's IPO news buried deeper in the business section. Here's a nice tie-in for anyone planning to attend VON Canada in early April. Mathew will be joining Alec, Mark Evans, myself and a few other local IP bloggers (and Jeff Pulver) on the Blogger Roundtable. This was a big hit at Fall VON in Boston, and it's great to see the session being reprised with a Canadian twist.

- it's early in the day, but I would expect to see posts from Mark Evans, Al Bredenberg and other Iotum watchers later on - it's a great story, esp for anyone following the Canadian tech sector

- finally - making it real. There actually is a product launch around all this. Iotum's initial offering is a conferencing application, called Pronto Conferencing - the news hit the wires late yesterday.