I haven’t had a lot of time to jump into the fracas this weekend emerging about TechCrunch50 because the team has been busy organizing the conference and spending hours and hours working with the 52 startups that will be launching at the event to make sure their demos properly reflect what they’ve worked so hard to create.

But I do have a few things to say.

First, thanks to Chris O’Brien at the San Jose Mercury News who wrote such a great article on TechCrunch and the conference. What a wonderful, positive way to kick things off as we go into the craziness on Monday. He really gets what we’re trying to accomplish and how honored we are that these startups have chosen to launch at our event.

Second, I some of the press out there is starting to go a little crazy with the drama between TechCrunch50 and Demo. We’ve stated from the beginning that we think the DEMO format is unethical. If you are going to parade out a bunch of startups on a stage that paid you $18,500 each, you simply can’t say they’re the most qualified companies to be at the event. It’s just a lie.