Comments on: Presenting Successful Demos

By: http://

http:// — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 02:10:01 +0000

I agree with Wayne. Virtualized environments is the way to go. Before that, I would inevitably screw up something from a carefully rehearsed “setup script” … however, now, with the cloud, I would like to have not just a “snapshot” of my desktop, but, the entire environment as well which is harder.

Simon, you nicely recovered from the JavaOne demo.

By: http://

http:// — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 20:06:28 +0000

@Simon – There are easy answers to these issues. I freeze my virtualized environments — I don’t allow them to update themselves automatically, and I only explicitly update them if I want to demo a new version of the product or demo on top of a new version of the platform. Otherwise I don’t allow them to change, so this isn’t a worry.

As for corrupted VHD files, I always carry at least two copies — one on my demo laptop, and one on a USB pocket drive, so replacing a corrupted copy is easy. Plus I always keep a master copy on a RAID drive back in the office, although in a pinch it’s always possible to rebuild the image if necessary.

By: Simon

Simon — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 01:44:02 +0000

@Wayne – it’s a good point and I did deliberate whether to mention this in the post. I tend to be on the fence when it comes to virtualization for demos. I love the ability to reset/use undo disks after the demo – this is very powerful. With that said, keeping multiple virtualized environments current can be difficult (e.g. patches, system updates) especially if it’s an infrequently used demo – and I remember the case where a colleague of mine found that his VHD file had become corrupted 10 minutes before his session start…

By: http://

http:// — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 00:48:29 +0000

Nice discussion of demos and problems related to state. One additional strategy that you don’t mention is the use of virtualized environments for demos. They can be guaranteed to begin at a certain state, and undo disk features can be used to guarantee that they revert to that state when the demo is done.

I realize that virtualized environments aren’t always appropriate for demos — performance considerations may dictate other approaches — but for many situations they are the way to go.