2. Why does a demo matter?

3. Conveys your passion.

4. Unveils your hard work.

5. Keeps you organized.

6. And if it is bad…

7. Turns your audience against you.

8. Makes it look like “you don’t know what
you are talking about.”

9. Wastes time as it loses you and
your audience.

10. Preparing for your demo.

11. Prepare yourself.
• Who is attending the demo?
• Dress the part.

12. Prepare your software.
• Clean out test messages.
• Create real-world data.
• Test everything.

13. Prepare your software.
• Configure all settings before the demo.
• It doesn’t have to be ready for the real world,
but it has to be ready for the demo.

14. Prepare your system.
• Close anything that may make noise or
display pop-up messages.

16. Prepare your setting.

17. Prepare your story.

18. The big day is here!

20. Give a good overview.
• Thank the audience for attending.
• Set expectations without badmouthing yourself or the software.
• Show the main screen and talk about what the software or feature
does.

21. Stay out of the settings.

23. Work through use cases or
scenarios.

24. Show enough to give the audience an
idea of what the software does without
showing everything.

25. This is a demo, not training.

26. Point out where data comes from or is
reused.

27. Stay out of the weeds.

28. Tell the story from the user’s viewpoint.

29. Focus on how to use a feature, not
how it was designed.

30. It doesn’t matter what you did if they don’t
know why you did it.

31. Be flexible.

32. Keep everyone on task.

33. Squirrel!

34. End the story.

35. Don’t start with a blank screen.

36. Don’t dive into settings and
configuration screens.

37. Don’t show the same thing over
and over

38. Questions?

39. Thank you!
Robert Rhyne Armstrong
@ninety7 – facebook.com/rhyne
rhynearmstrong@gmail.com