If there’s one learning you can take out of working with technology it’s - never do live demos. That means never. And the bigger and more important the audience, the more that rule holds true.
So if you’re demoing to your next door neighbour’s dog, you’re probably on pretty safe ground. But if you’re doing it to more than 3 people who you want to convince that what you do is kinda cool, you’re asking for trouble.
So it was with this week’s Mobile Monday in London. I was given a 10 minute slot to talk about Mobile Advertising, so I decided to give a live demo of Admob’s site. My thinking was that I could show something that most of the audience hadn’t seen before - a mobile advertising campaign actually happening in real time
I’ve done this lots of times. All it involves is logging to to the website and running a campaign for $10. What’s impressive is that $10 is spent in about 20 seconds and generates 200 real clicks from real people in the wild. People literally go a little shivery and go “wow” as they glimpse a view of the future happening now.
Even better is that I set the fictitious campaign up so that respondents were asked to leave their email addresses. Now, most people think that 200 responses will lead to about 5 or 10 email addresses - which is a good assumption if you base your thinking on the web. What I know is that this leads to about 70 or 80 email addresses - which leads to a double-wow from the audience.
I have to admit, I was very nervous giving this presentation. Not that giving a talk to 150 peers would particularly phase me, but I was really worried that something would go wrong with the demo. It’s a control thing 
So I set the scene by making a light hearted remark about the risk of doing live demos. Started the campaign running and…….nothing happened. The PC screen froze leaving me there on stage with a very sympathetic audience, but with only one thought running through my head - “Beam me up Scottie”.
Anyway, I decided to let one of the other speakers go on while I regrouped. I sat down and immediately found the problem. My browser had crashed, coz when I popped open another browser, the campaign had run already and the money was gone (about 30 seconds).
I quickly looked at my email haul and had over 100. Maybe I could save the day and go back on again and at least show the results by way of validation. So I did. I plunged back into the limelight, plugged my PC into it on screen and……nothing happened. The sodding thing had crashed.
Nothing to do but bow out gracefully.
People I spoke to afterwards were very kind and I’ve had dozens of emails saying that they really felt for me and even that I got the message across well. But I think that the people who really needed to get the idea - that for an independent apps developer, you can get your product in the hands of the consumer in a low cost, highly targeted way and on a results only basis was lost. Ho hum.
So, by all means play cards with a man named Doc (you might win), eat in a place named Moms (it might be delicious), share a stage with kids or animals (they might be well behaved) but never, never give live demos to an audience you care about.
Anyway, I’m off to give another live demo. Hey, you don’t think I take my own advice, do you?
Here’s the fateful moment, captured live on camera…
http://www.flickr.com/photos/atiller/234022049/
Those demo gods can be so cruel.
Even without the demo, the talk was still one of the most interesting parts of the evening.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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….
Shame. Sounds like an interesting product though. What’s the URL?
Admobis? You meant http://www.admob.com, right? One more parting shot from the demo gods I guess
Good point - thanks Alan.
Russell
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!