Demo Day Presenting Tips

DemoDayPresentingTips.md

Demo Day Presenting Tips

• Make sure your device is charged before you go up to present.
• Share the mission statement of your project before you get into the demo. Why did you come up with this idea? Make it engaging.
• As you're presenting, don't highlight any faults of your application or things left unfinished.
• Don't read directly from your slides or notes.
• Don't have huge blocks of text on your slides. Bullet points are better than paragraphs of text.
• Close all other apps and tabs except the ones you plan to use.
• Test your app with CMD +/-. They can greatly effect the look of your app. You do not want to do this for the first time during the demo!
• Remember, your browser doesn't need to be full screen, and will probably look best if it isn't. Clean your desktop up and use a plain color background. Change your Mac desktop navbar to disappear until you hover over it. This will give you a nice clean desktop to use with a smaller browser window sized to what looks best for your app.
• Practice connecting to the projector so you can do it smoothly, know what to expect, and know what size it will be from far away.
• For Ruby devs, be sure you have real data in both your local app and the one on Heroku. Give your heroku URL out during your talk (in your slides), but I'm ok with you demoing from local (a change to what I previously said). However, I do require it to be running on Heroku with live good data, and for you to share that url, because attendees will want to see it for themselves.
• Do your final pitch practice with the version of the app you will use on demo day.
• No commits to master after Wednesday's practice!
• Create a release on GitHub for the version you demo on Wednesday. This is your backup.