Comments on: Never Do Live Demos

By: Shane Williamson

Shane Williamson — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 23:28:15 +0000

As a technology presenter I feel for you mate as I have been there so many times.

My experience though is to sacrifice a piece of technology to the demo gods before getting up to present. The more expensive the device sacrificed the better the demo!

Then I must admit that no matter how many demos may have failed in the past, the adrenalin rush of getting through one unscathed is too sweet an opportunity to pass up again.

Demos always rule over PowerPoint bashing so keep the faith!

By: Russell Buckley

Russell Buckley — Fri, 08 Sep 2006 07:04:57 +0000

Good point – thanks Alan.

Russell

By: alan jones

alan jones — Fri, 08 Sep 2006 01:50:12 +0000

Admobis? You meant http://www.admob.com, right? One more parting shot from the demo gods I guess

By: Marc

Marc — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 11:33:14 +0000

Shame. Sounds like an interesting product though. What’s the URL?

By: jamescoops

jamescoops — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 19:53:35 +0000

it was still one of the better presentations…

The MTV guy’s main contribution was to point out that young people are the main consumers of ringtones….

By: Russell

Russell — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 16:21:05 +0000

In fairness, I did have a backup strategy, including another set of slides with screen grabs. the trouble was that when the crash happened, it was too late to go back.
Ho hum

By: Anders Borg

Anders Borg — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 15:56:46 +0000

Been there, done that .

A working demo can be quite useful though, as most people are used to slideware that talks about things that might come out in a year or two, and might work then, with a spec sheet that’s maybe not entirely different from what the slideware says.

By: Debbie Landa

Debbie Landa — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 15:55:31 +0000

I know this scenario all to well – i produce a conference called Under the Radar and we have 32 companies showing demo’s in a day – you can’t imagine how many times i tell these guys they shouldn’t do a live demo and they always insist that is won’t be a problem but alas, we still get PCs and MACs crashing when they least expect it. If everyone learned to do screen shots and convey their message clearly, they would be golden….maybe you could write a post for us for our next mobility conference and eductate the companies on how to demo their mobile products for the audience.

By: Tarek

Tarek — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 15:34:26 +0000

It really was bad luck!

But it was good to see someone actually *showing* their product rather than just *talking* about it, so I’ll bet most ppl would have given you a lot of points for that. I for one have signed up to see how it works based on what I saw on Monday.

Oh and I registered using the 200Million offer. Perhaps it might be a good idea to point a few ppl who would have been at MoMo there to try it out for themselves

By: AAM

AAM — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 14:47:18 +0000

what an awful bit of bad luck!

did you have time before hand to run the demo at the venue, like when a band sound checks the room?

PC’s are so flakey, I’ve used my Mac countless times dj’n and playing music, only had it crash once in public, and I had a back up iPod to keep the sounds going, while I rebooted.