Christian Perry, the organizer of tech mixer SFBeta, has offended some by charging for product demos, like next week's presentation by Powerset of its natural-language search technology. Tickets to his event cost $10 — $20 if you're a venture capitalist or other presumably loaded type. Perry, if he's savvy, one presumes, is also charging the companies for the privilege of showing off their wares. (Update: Perry tells Valleywag he actually doesn't charge companies to present. How unsavvy!) Even so, how is this any different than Demo, D: All Thing Digital, Supernova, or any other of the countless similar startup conferences which charge both attendees and presenters? The answer: It's way, way cheaper. Way, way less likely to bore with days of endless dog-and-pony shows. And, alas, way, way less likely to result in revealing cocktail chatter.

(Photo by jspepper)