Live or Memorex?
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Live or MemorexThe 2006 PASS Summit was a few weeks ago and I was one of the lucky few that got to attend. I learned a bit and for the most part enjoyed parts of a number of sessions. I'm looking forward to digging into the videos and seeing more of a few presentations.
However one things struck me. One of the demos bombed during a keynote and another was a little choppy. I also saw a few of the individual sessions where demos didn't go quite as smoothly as I'm sure the speakers would have liked. It's always frustrating when your demo doesn't go as planned, some error occurs, you try something new that doesn't work because of security, etc. As I sat there during the week, I thought that things would be much smoother in many cases if the presenter could just focus on presenting the information and let the demo run. So I thought I'd ask all of you techies for whom these presentations are created...
Would you be happy with pre-recorded demos?
My thought was that we all know the demos are faked. They're preset to show one feature, in one contrived situation, and in a way controlled by the presenter. For anyone with experience, we realize that implementing an application such as they show us is a lot more work than they make it seem to require. So my thought was since they're faked, record them and just play the AVI/Quicktime/Movie file, pause it where needed, or have an assistant pause it, and let the demo flow smoothly without the need for the presenter to concentrate on working through the demo.
So I'm wondering if you think the point of the demo, the showcasing of technology, or whatever you derive from the demos, would be compromised by pre-recording the demonstration of the code.
As one further note, I'd also like to see the application code people provide be more real world, with proper error handling, security, and other full fledged application code.
Steve Jones
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I'm all for the pre-recording of the demo, especially if it meant we could be given a copy afterwards - there's nothing worse than getting the slide deck and there's a slide that says '...<XYZ Topic> Demo...'. It would also stop the current excuse '... this is server software and I'm running a <fill in brandname here> laptop,with virtual PC on it with 6 virtual servers running and only 2 Gb of ram....'
I agree that it would be nice to see 'real-life' code too but can understand the time constraints that may make it hard for the presenters to put this together. I guess if we removed the need to practice/rehaearse the preso then they could spend more time putting in better demo code??
Is it bad that I only looked at this editorial because I bought my kids a cheap memorex TV this year and was intrigued as to how you'd mix that in with SQL server?
Cheers,
Steve.
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I vote for a real demo, using real equipment - and with enough configuration and testing effort invested that it actually works as advertised. If I wanted animation, I would save time and money and just watch the vendor's webcast instead of attending the conference.
If I can push a cart loaded with a server and a router across a university parking lot (think BIG) to set up a network for a class project on networked data access (which our team aced), surely those presenting with a monetary motive can do at least as much.
You also have to consider that when I do planning conference support, there's a full copy of the conference database and IIS loaded on a laptop in case the high-speed internet connection is down (it has happened).
If these make me an over-achiever, then I may be the oldest over-achiever you know - the class project was part of the coursework for the IS degree I received after I retired.
John
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I agree that with more time and configuration testing more demos would go as planned but sometimes the problem's a carbon-based one, like when your presenter is a mouse-mover (moving it *all* the time), or a non-right-click guy; and sometimes the problem truly is they don't have the $$ to put up a server and travel that thing all over the country. I know I've been to some Msft demos here in the US where they have rolled in two racks (and shut one down to show the fail-over) but when in Aus all we got was laptops....with virtual PC at that.... Also quite a few of the presenters at TechEd (in Aus in 05 ) weren't Msft employees and the companies they work for (quite often boutique consultancies) truly don't have the $ to put up the iron or transport it to every venue.
John, are we to assume you didn't retire at 20 after the dotcom crash?
Steve.
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i vote for pre-recorded...
the point of attenting one fo these sessions is to listen to the man making the speech.
the point of visual aids is to assiste the man making the speech, not to put him off or fluster hm when it goes wrong. you can lose interest very quickly when the speakers attention is diverted to his laptop.
if you want a live system go to a workshop not a presentation.
MVDBA
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I vote for pre-recorded with the topic expert available for questions following the presentation. Also it would be nice for a real world example. How many demos have we seen with 'Hello World'? That might be good for a high level capability demo, but when you are there to see the deep capabilities I want an example that at least follows the recommended best practices. It can still be 'Hello World' but with some security and error handling in place as well.
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I'm going with the DBA answer... it depends.
Microsoft showing us how well mirroring works, I want a live demo, crashes & all. If it's really going to slice, dice & julienne, let's see it. Plus, in that particular key note, the crash was the high point.
Someone in a session teaching us how something works, a recorded demo is fine. In this situation, the knowledge we're getting is the important part, not seeing the failover occur, real time.
Either way, full applications & source code, preferably comparable to real world situations, with a realistic set of error trapping should be supplied.
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
- Theodore RooseveltAuthor of:
SQL Server Execution Plans
SQL Server Query Performance Tuning -
Steve, I was one of the presenters at PASS, and my demo code worked and performed well in all my testing prior to the live presentation. This year they used a new scenario where we logged into our demo machines via Remote Desktop from a machine which recorded the entire demo. This software and process put a large performance hit on the demo, and I struggled at times even scrolling through the code to explain what was going on. I believe that there was sufficient dissatisfaction on the part of the speakers that the board will work on finding a better solution for next year's event.
I prefer doing the demo live, so that if some question comes up during the presentation I can make a quick modification to the code and show how that aspect works.
As far as the slide that says "Demo Here" - I uploaded my demo code (the entire solution directories) to the PASS site and everything I showed is available to attendees and for them to use in their own shops.
I have to disagree, though, with your comment about including full error handling and security checks in the demo code. I was not there to teach people how to write professional code, I was teaching them how to use SMO, and my demo code included just the code necessary to demonstrate the point. Anything additional in the code would require too much explanation and lost time from the real purpose I'm standing in front of people.
Allen White
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Like Allen above, I too was a presenter at PASS. He is exactly right in that the remote desktop and associated video capture put a serious kink in many presentations and especially demos. I'm sure that this will be worked out next year. While you were sitting on a PowerPoint slide, everything went well. When you had to do anything that had a moderate amount of screen refresh, it went downhill fast. And the thing that had the most screen refreshes in most presentations were the demos.
I also agree with Allen regarding error handling and security checks. It simply is a distraction in demo code that is being used for a live presentation. Well written code with all the bells and whistles of error handling and data verification can be extraordinarily complex. And it got two or three orders of magnitude more complex in SQL 2005 with TRY-CATCH blocks, bubbling errors out of SQLCLR, OUTPUT, ERROR_ functions, etc... Whereas before everyone just caught @@ERROR, now it is rich.
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Hi Steve,
Even though I appreciate your concern, I don't like the idea of recorded demos. Let the errors happen, what's the big deal? We are all programmers right.
It would be more appropriate to ensure less of those errors happen. I am not sure of the magnitude of the PASS summit, but I am assuming it should be a mammoth one from what I see from the discussions here. In an event of such a scale, just two sessions having some snags, in my opinion, demonstrates how much preparation has gone into the summit. That is an appreciable effort.
Views may differ, but recorded demos is not the answer. Just don't let the presenter alone be the techie around who knows how to handle the presentation. There should be people who can help out the presenter in case of a crisis. The presenter is bound to have butterflies in such a situation.
jambu
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I like the idea of pre-recorded, but I'm concerned on whether we would have issues of legitimicy arise? Let's just take into account a demo where the presenter is using a version of the software that is either later or earlier than the one that is available to the masses? I see this quite a lot with MS's presentations and I'm not faulting them that, but if the UI changes or functionality changes, then we're left with a misperception of the product.
What too would stop a company from mocking up a demo so that it looked like the real thing, but instead was just a modeled fly through of what "should" happen? Maybe their product has it's little pecadillos and they want it to look smooth so that it flys off the shelves? I'm sure the majority of companies are honest, but even the best of us can be lead into temptation. When the stakes are high and your're pitching this product to a large audience of decision makers, the thought of putting a little more polish on the product than exists might be too great.
Also - simple editing flaws might creep in. Maybe a step gets cut because it didn't go quite right and they re-did the step and this time it worked, but that didn't make it to the demo and instead you miss a step? It wasn't intentional, but now the viewer is going to come into something and miss the process. Granted these are promos of what the product can do, not training sessions, but how often do we see these and then "know" that a product can do such and such and how it does it?
I think we should see the bumps and bothers. If anything, it lets us know we aren't alone when these happen to us. I also think the presenters should be graceful and courteous when the flaw appears in a competitors or other product they are using.
I remember one SD conference where Borland was giving a presentation on the latest version of Delphi. Part way through the session, PowerPoint GPF'd. Everyone laughed, but the Borland guy commented "I couldn't have paid to have this happen." That left a bad taste in my mouth. We all know that apps have problems. Delphi wasn't flawless by any means, and it could just as easily have been his app that croaked. ("But for the Grace of God go I" comes to mind).
Let's see a bit of decorum - we've all been there, we know that things don't always go as planned when you're pitching the idea to the boss.
Ad maiorem Dei gloriam
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Doing the demo in a more real environment would be great. I've commented in the past about presenting .NET demos in an n-Tier environment instead of the simple way they currently do it. It would reinforce best practices.
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I kind of like the presenter actually working the product. If their product is really buggy, they can make it look perfect if they pre-record everything.
Also, aside from the schaudenfreuda aspect of watching someone's presentation go wrong, it sometimes gives some insight into what it actuallly takes to do things in the application. If it takes them 30 clicks to set up some little thing, that provides a little better picture of how their product would work in real life.
teague
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I agree with you a 100%. When I saw a demo for a new software that we suppose to get, all I saw were error messages.
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It depends...
If it is a technical presentation, use the real software. I do want to see how it is really reacting.
If it is a presentation of features (high end overview) then I do not care.
Sounds like they should have used fraps at PASS....
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