

How not to give a Demo: Lessons learned from a first-timer - RKoutnik
http://recoding.blogspot.com/2012/11/how-not-to-demo.html

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jspaur
An upside to giving demos is that if your viewer doesn't know you're a dev on
the project (thinks you're just a business/sales person), they're a lot more
honest with feedback. I've learned to never position myself as the guy who
knows everything about the product...they're less afraid to 'hurt' my
feelings.

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kordless
How well I present seems to be inversely correlated to how stressed I am
before the presentation. Most of my prep time is usually calming myself down
and trying not to think about anything except what my intent is: to share what
I know with others and learn from them if I can. Practicing that level of
honesty usually works out in a public setting, regardless of what insanity
occurs with projectors, laptops, Internet connections and the like.

Oh, also, if you want to do a demo, do a screen recording! Movies are much
less prone to failure.

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RKoutnik
Great idea about the screen recording. I'll incorporate some of your ideas
into Friday's post.

The idea of focusing on the core of what you're doing is an important one.
Looking back, another mistake I made was focusing on the presentation, rather
than the chance to get to share a wonderful idea with people who could give
good feed back.

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R_Edward
Excellent lessons! Anyone who has to give a presentation could stand to take
them to heart. Unfortunately, most of us don't learn nearly as well from each
other as we do from Professor Experience.

My most important lessons were 1) never assume that your PC is going to behave
the same way at your desk as it will in the presentation room, and 2) when
demoing software, never say anything more predictive than "Now watch this!"

