PALM DESERT, Calif. -- The party is over. The booth is down. And LiquidPlanner executives are headed to the airport.

Last night, the company attended the DEMOgod awards, celebrating the 11 best products of the conference. Chief Executive Charles Seybold held out some hope that LiquidPlanner would take a top prize, anxiously watching the big budget media production that reminded some of the Oscars.

"I wish this could be like T-ball where every company gets a ribbon for participating," said conference organizer Chris Shipley.

But business is not T-ball and there are more losers than winners.

Each time Shipley announced a new winner whose name began with the letter "L," the LiquidPlanner team thought they might be the one.

But it was not meant to be. Seybold asked colleague Bruce Henry if he had a joke prepared for an acceptance speech.

"I don't know, just go up there and be honest," replied Henry. They also wondered why fellow Seattle presenter blist -- maker of an online database -- didn't get the nod. (Several LiquidPlanner employees thought blist -- whose chief executive Kevin Merritt joined them for dinner -- had a better shot.)

After the awards, the team headed to the hotel bar for more networking. They congratulated the executives of Education.com, one of the DEMOgod winners. Sipping a Mojito, Seybold chatted with the team from the Redwood City, Calif., startup, whose SchoolFinder product was among his personal favorites from the show.

Later, Seybold said a DEMOgod award would have been nice for his company.

"I am a little competitive. And I would have liked to bring something back to the Northwest," he said. "But it is project management software. It is B2B."

Co-founder Jason Carlson said he was not disappointed at all.

"I had my expectations set very low, mostly because I am from the Midwest. I am very pragmatic," he said.

Carlson's goals for the show were to successfully launch the product, get press and possibly find a venture capital backer. Winning a DEMOgod award is a bit superfluous, he said.

"It is nice to have. But if you can get 100 people to care about project management here -- you have done a good job," said Carlson, adding that it is eye-opening to hear the perspectives of people who have not been working on the product.

Had they not attended DEMO, the company may have tinkered with the product for another three months.

"It forced us to ship something and that was the right call," he said.

Now, a new phase begins at LiquidPlanner, attracting customers and venture capital financing. That painstaking process has already started.

Today, Carlson and Seybold fly to Silicon Valley to meet with venture capitalists.

Can they use the momentum from DEMO to score $3 million to $6 million? That's the next chapter in the history of LiquidPlanner.

The DEMO chapter is now over.

In their sky blue jackets, LiquidPlanner executives Jason Carlson, Bruce Henry and Charles Seybold at DEMO. Photo: John Cook