Steal this idea: plus four more lessons from DEMOgala.

• Author: Peterson, Eric
• Position: [Q4 tech report] DEMOgala - Conference news

The Colorado Software and Internet Association threw its annual DEMOgala at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Denver in October, featuring 40 speakers and panelists as well as a dozen lunchtime demos by tech startups from Colorado and elsewhere.

"Oftentimes in Denver, we think we're not as good as fill-in-the-blank city," said CSIA President Su Hawk in her remarks at the luncheon, touting the best-in-the-nation performance of local startups that applied to the Founders Institute accelerator. "We're not - we're actually better."

Beyond Colorado's superlative status, there was plenty else to glean from the day's panels and speakers, including the following five lessons for this young century.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

LESSON #1: IT WORKERS ARE STILL IN DEMAND

"You can't talk about jobs without talking about GDP," said Brent Rasmussen, president, North America at CareerBuilder.com, citing the weak-but-positive numbers this year. "It's not wild growth, but it is growth, and when GDP grows, jobs follow."

The good news? The economy created about 100,000 new jobs per month in 2010. And the bad? It needs to create 150,000 new jobs every month just to keep pace with new entrants into the work force and keep unemployment stable.

Regardless, the number of IT jobs in Colorado actually grew more than any other state from 2007 to 2010, although at a quasi-anemic 2.2 percent rate. "But that still beats California," Rasmussen said. The top IT skills for 2011 are programming and application development, IT project management, tech support, networking and security.

The IT job market continues to grow at a fast and determined pace, thanks to blistering international growth in terms of users. "There are more people on broadband in China than there are in the United States," Rasmussen said.

"People always ask me, 'What field should my 16-year-old junior go into?'" he said. "Health care's a good answer, but tech is where the biggest growth will be. You'll have a job in the United States for a long time."

LESSON #2: STEALING WORKS

Fabrice Grinda, co-CEO of OLX, spoke about "Combating Incumbents." Describing himself as "a professional thief," Grinda said, "If you look at Picasso and Matisse, they stole from each other all the time."

What Grinda does is take ideas and port them to new markets. He described his first startup, Aucland, as the eBay for southern Europe. His second company, Zingy, sold ringtones in the U.S. after he saw companies doing so in Europe. His...