I recently worked with several companies to set up a TV-centric converged services demo involving handsets, set-top boxes, various pieces of middleware and many smart people. It’s an exciting project.

Then came the crunch. Every project has one. On the day, at the big exhibition, the demo didn’t work. Now, I’ve done so many demos over the years that I now have demo-phobia, such are the unpredictability of the things. If you’ve been there, then you know exactly what I’m talking about. Heck, even Jobs and Gates have had their share of bloopers.

You will also know about the low-tech fallout. For example, you spend 1 trillion hours of your best coding effort to get the slickest demo on the planet ready that took the brains of ten men that you have, only to turn up and….

“OK, what shall I run this on?”
“What do you mean?”
“I have it here on this USB drive, the deal-clinching demo of the century - I just need a laptop to run it on.”
“Didn’t you bring one?”
Intense look of isn’t-the-answer-obvious anger, he says “No, I thought you were bringing yours.”
“No, I left mine at the office. All I need is my Blackberry.”
Red faces. Sweaty armpits. Dig me a hole emotions.

“Hey guys. No problem. Use mine.”
Customer slides his laptop across the table.
“Are you sure?” says demo man politely, trying to cover his embarassment whilst obviously now asking an isn’t-the-answer-obvious question himself.
“No problem. Here, let me log you in.”
Sh*t! thinks demo man. It’s got the wrong version of Java.
Red faces. Sweaty armpits. Dig me a hole emotions.
I know, I’ll just quickly download the right one whilst chatting idly and cracking a few jokes to lighten the air here.

tick tock, tick tock…

Sh*t! What the?
Demo man turns the laptop away from prying eyes to hide big ERROR message on screen. He fiddles around. Click, press, click.
Red faces. Sweaty armpits. Dig me a HUGE hole emotions. Where’s the coffee? He takes large gulp of burnt stale coffee.
Oh, I hate my colleague. It’s all his fault. Useless sales guy. I mean, who comes to a meeting without a laptop? [I did, but…]

“Nearly done there?”
“Oh yeah” he lies, now stuck with the dilemma of explaining the ongoing blunder versus saying nothing whilst pretending all is OK, but actually buying more time. He presses on.
“It’s just that we gave you an hour and it’s already half past. We have a hard deadline here.”
Hard deadline my arse. What’s a hard deadline anyway?
“Well, it seems that there’s a problem with your laptop” he lies.
“I can’t seem to get the program running” he lies, not having installed it yet and still faffing around with browser installation errors.
“OK, well, why don’t you go through the slides and we can see the demo another time” she lies.
Slides? Shit!
“Well…” he says, not sure how to explain lack of slides on USB drive, pushing the laptop back across the table and not noticing…

“SH*T!”
Too late. He knocks over coffee cup, spewing tepid contents over the customer’s lap and, foolishly trying to grab cup, spills remaining contents all over laptop keyboard.
Puff!
Blank screen.
Smell of burning.
Redder faces.
Sweat just pouring down back of un-ironed demo shirt.
Just dug my own grave emotions.
Colleague digging hard to find textbook way out of this one.

“Sorry - are you okay?” says demo man, asking the most ridiculous isn’t-the-answer-obvious question.
Serves you right. Shit coffee anyway, he thinks, just trying to make himself feel better than a complete idiot despite all his trillion lines of 2.0 code and ten brains that simply go unnoticed.

Okay, so I exaggerated a little. It was tea, not coffee, but you get the picture. Thousands spent getting equipment to an exhibition and no serial cable to connect the widget. The wrong CD in your rucksack. No CD in your rucksack. No passport! All low-tech fallout folks.

So, back to the demo. Well it didn’t work because someone assumed that the demo environment was identical to a previous one and didn’t spot the difference - there’s a reason they put those spot the difference puzzles on the top of Pizza Hut place mats!

The moral of the story….
Don’t overlook the basics.
(Don’t do demos?)