And the DEMO Asia 2012 awards go to….

As the Demo Guru awards were announced at the end of the conference, a sign of life could finally be seen from the audience.  To moderate hooting and hollering, the winners walked on stage, smiled and prepared themselves for instant fame. Congratulations to Fiett, dropmyinbox, Sofshell, PixTelz and FlexiRoam.

The biggest winner of the night was Hoiio API, who cannily used their own system to sweep the People’s Choice award.

The winners.

We followed up with winners to share in their excitement, here’s what they had to say about their experience at DEMO Asia 2012.

Sofshell clearly had the best presentation of the conference and it turns out they have one of the best products as well. The team dared to test their impact protection product by dropping a 12-pound bowling bowl on an iPhone. With their Demo award in hand, the team is looking forward to monitization and “making athletes look sexy and fashionable while being protected.”

Famously frigid Chairmain from Fiett showed up on stage in a thick winter jacket to remind us that people who are not so lucky to live in Singapore suffer from iPhone-unfriendly conditions. The Demo Gurus thought her touch-friendly gloves were a promising solution — and she’s happy to say that there’s more to come with different textiles and products in the pipeline.

Dropmyemail isn’t just leaving a Demo Guru winner, thanks to exposure and networking at this conference they’re basking in investor love and looking forward to a potential telco deal. But don’t expect that to go to their heads, John let us know that, “It’s more important that our customers love us, the money will come.”

Sofshell were jubilent in their victory.

FlexiRoam brushed off any jokes that MC Tim Kua made about the legality of a service that eliminates data roaming charges (What will Singtell think!). With his Demo Guru award in hand, founder Jef Ong boasted, “We’re a disruptive technology! Is Skype legal?”

Now they’re looking for a way to expand into a multi-billion dollar company. Jef exuberantly told us, “We have the strategy, the market, and the guns — now we need the bullets!”

The team at Pixtelz was flying sky-high thanks to the win, or at least we think they were. Their product CuteChat gives video chat users the ability to change their location, making it seem that they’re at DemoAsia when really they’re already relaxing back at home. Congrats to Pixtelz whereever you are!

And just how did Hoiio, an API that makes it easy for developers to create apps that connect multiple phones, manage to win the biggest award of the night?  Simple! During their six minute presentation, Founder Junda Ong asked the audience to call in to show how simple it was to build voice conferences, voice mail and SMS using their API. Over 90 people willingly participated and we all laughed as the Hoiio team displayed our phone numbers on the big screen.

Little did we know that Hoiio wasn’t just demo’ing their product, they were building a community of people who liked their pitch and a means of contacting that community when it came time to vote.  That’s right, when the polls opened Hoiio used their API to develop a quick mass SMS – we all received a polite text from Hoiio reminding us to vote.