Damn, that is a great guess that is so close it hurts: you've made me confident that I'm mis-remembering enough to think I'm actually talking about the FireEagle launch event. The Pipes demo was a different session, possibly a year or two earlier.

Either way, the person I am doing a laughably poor job of describing was at the FireEagle event but I definitely remember him being a peer/coworker of Tom's - he wasn't the center of attention that day.

Sigh.