I attended a presentation recently of a new software product being developed by a well known analytics company. I was promised an extensive demo of their new product that during the power point presentation, looked well rounded and functionally rich, so I was sitting there with batted breath eager to see for myself the cool new software. I was very disappointed with what followed. An unscripted mess full of application terminations and full screen Assert messages bombarded my senses, the casual attitude of the presenters further agitated me as they seemed not to care that their cool software was a shambles, and clearly was not ready to be presented to even the most sympathetic of viewers.
I have done software demo's before, and the cardinal rule is to script the hell out of the demo, so that there are no surprises, and the product can be presented in the best of light. It was a shame that the company that I went to see, does not have the same philosophy.