Joel on Demos
Joel Spolsky wrote a great post on giving demo's, this bit is a gem:
"The only interesting way to design a demo is to make it a story. You have a protagonist, and the protagonist has a problem, and they use the software, and they… almost solve the problem, but not quite, and then everybody is in suspense, while you tell them some boring stuff that doesn’t fit anywhere else, but they’re still listening raptly because they’re waiting to hear the resolution to the suspenseful story, and then (ah!) you solve the protagonists last problem, and all is well. There is a reason people have been sitting around telling stories around campfires for the last million years or so: people like stories."
Joel on Software
I give a lot of demo's. Many with notice, some with short notice and others with no notice. "Whoa there, doohickey 2007 does whatnow?". But the great thing about being a technology specialist for office is that my weapons of choice are already running when I open my laptop lid. Joel goes on to say:
"As you go along, be sure to accidentally bump into all the nice little “fit and finish” features of your product. Oh look, that column is halfway off screen. No problem. I’ll just drag it over."
Which made me think about the "fit and finish" features of the Office system that I should sprinkle into my demos. Things like:
Natural language dates in Outlook
Windows-S screen capping with OneNote (which pastes to OneNote and to the clipboard at the same time...Hot!).
Oh yeah, and Text recognition in images in OneNote.
Automagically synchronising my IE favourites across computers via Groove.
the good old "=lorem()" in Word.
Oh, and Flip3d :). That way even boring demo's get an "Ooooh".
