Three days straight of staged product demonstrations. There's one hour left. Six of the worst planned presentations are left to go. How do you keep a weary room of convention-goers awake?

Give them Demo 'Till You Drop-- The Gong Show of Product Demonstrations, an event held this year at Upside Events' Showcase in Palm Springs.

With Let's Make a Deal flair, desperate Internet CEOs-- some in costume-- reveal themselves behind door number one, two, or three, completely unprepared for the ridicule. The rules are as follows: Each entrepreneurial presenter is entitled six minutes to demo his or her Internet service. To get the boot (as if you'd want it) two separate judges have to give you the gong. Presenters attempt to continue the presentation after the first gong, in hopes of not getting a second. My suggestion for next year: Cut it to three minutes and just one gong.

The judges included "heavy on the gong" Silicon Spin regular Larry Magid from the Los Angeles Times, and Doobie Brothers guitarist Jeff Baxer, who upon introduction said, "Hey, I thought you said this was The Bong Show."

Host Gina Smith changed the rules in the middle of the event, drawing even more suckers to perform for the unruly Showtime at the Apollo crowd (OK, as close as you can get to the Showtime at the Apollo with an abundantly white Palm Springs audience).

One company, Trapezo, was fortunate enough to conclude its presentation with an applause break. Not seeing that as a good sign to get off, the company pushed its luck by forcing the audience to repeat its mantra, "Web speed partnering!"-- a mistake that erupted in a chorus of gongs.

Everyone was surprised when host Gina admitted that Web Wowser got into the show with "a visit to her room." Yes, that was written out of context, but that's the way the audience saw it. A chorus of chuckles quickly ensued.

Only two presenters avoided ejection: Inxight and iBooks.com. Surprisingly, Inxight slipped by with a PowerPoint presentation of a four-year-old innovation-- Web-mapping software. Since iBooks.com's technology was less than 4 years old, they were elected as the defacto winners-- a title I hope they don't hold too proudly. Heck, it was The Gong Show, and they were the lesser of all the other evils.

As funny and cruel as this event was, Demo 'Till You Drop appeared to be a wake up call for most companies. If you can't make it on this stage, good luck making it in the real world.