As my friends and fellow mesh organizers Mark Evans and Stuart MacDonald have mentioned here and here — as well as the mesh blog — the winners of the “15 Minutes of Fame” feature have been chosen, and it is a pretty impressive group. Each will get five minutes to pitch their startup or service. The press release we issued this morning is here.

May 30 – 11:30 a.m. to noon

Octopz – An online collaboration service for text, video and audio
DemoFuse – Create interactive tours for your Web site
FiveLimes – A community based around eco-friendly products

May 31, 11:30 a.m. to noon

Conceptshare – An online collaboration tool for designers
SneakerPlay – A social network for sneaker enthusiasts
Wild Apricot – A website management service for non-profits

Congratulations to all. And thanks to all those who didn’t get chosen too — we had a great response and some really excellent applicants.

I wrote something a while ago about how the mesh gang — myself, Stuart “Chairman Mao” MacDonald, Rob “Rob” Hyndman, Mark Evans and Mike McDerment — had come up with something a bit different for our conference in beautiful downtown Toronto May 15th and 16th (still a few tickets left, head over there now, etc. etc.) — namely, the 15 Minutes of Fame. Well, now it’s time to reveal the winners of our litle contest.

The idea was to take some time at mesh — 5 minutes per person, in three slots the first day and three slots the second (hence the whole 15 minute thing, get it?) — to profile some of the young startups and people with ideas that make Web 2.0 such an interesting place to be, by giving them the stage to talk about their projects or companies. We asked for submissions, and we got a lot of pretty great ones. It was definitely hard to pick just six, but we did, and they will be at mesh in all their nervous glory, front and center.

Just to give you a taste, they include:

• Gary “The Kid” King — or King Gary, as he likes to call himself — who wrote us early on to ask why only university students were allowed to buy cheaper tickets, since he is in high school but is already running his own Web 2.0 design firm. Come on down, Gary, we said.
• Elissa Gjertson of AreYouFrank.com will be telling us about her company’s plans to use social media to help organizations of all kinds figure out what people are saying about them and how best to respond — all of which is totally up the mesh alley.
• Parv and Daniel of Favorville.com, which has set up an online swap shop that lets people trade things they can do for things that they need done.
• Colin How of Pixpo.com, whose photo, video and music-sharing software is being launched later this month with much fanfare, and who will tell us why his version of sharing media is better than all the other ones out there (right Colin?)

Want to hear more? Come and mesh with us.

Update:

Our friend Tara “Miss Rogue” Hunt, who will be doing a special interactive keynote/thingamajig at mesh about online marketing, has a very flattering post about mesh and the gang. Thanks, Tara — now we’re all blushing.