Make sure you’ve read all of the general presentation guidance. This page adds to that information.

Purpose

Think about the purpose of your demo.

Are you pitching - trying to get someone to use/buy/support your product?
If so, you probably want to focus on features, value, and why your product is unique.

Are you seeking feedback - asking people for suggestions or ideas?
If so, you probably want to tell the audience what feedback you want, and make sure they know how to give it.

Are you teaching - trying to help someone understand something they don’t know?
If so you probably want to be checking understanding as you go.

Are you celebrating - showing off something you’re proud of?

Make sure you think about this when you prepare your demo. Make sure the audience know what you’re expecting from them too.

Pick what you show

If you need to log into your product, the audience probably don’t care about watching you log in. Set up a tab which is already logged in so you can jump straight to the interesting stuff.

If your project requires you to add some data, but what you want to demo is how the data is presented, add the data before your demo so you can jump straight to the interesting stuff.

You don’t need to show the audience everything in your app. Focus on what matters.

Pick what you tell

You should have already picked a focused message. Only tell your audience what they need to understand that message.

If you’re demoing a product experience, you probably don’t need to talk about creating a git repo. It’s something you needed to do, but it doesn’t contribute to your focused message.

Preparing for a demo

Know the scenarios you are going to demo. Practice them!

Make sure your product/code is already up and running. No one wants to watch you start your project. No one wants to watch you try to open a project and find it’s not working.

Have tabs already open and prepared for each scenario you want to demo.

If you need to be logged in as multiple users (e.g. as a buyer and a seller) log in to one in your regular browser and use incognito mode to log in as the other one.

Consider pre-recording anything that could go wrong - that way you can switch to a video if you need.

Anticipate questions your audience are likely to ask you. Think about answers to them!

Demoing as a group

Make sure you know how you’re splitting up the demo between the people.

Make sure everyone is talking for about the same amount of time. Don’t let one person take over.

If you’re handling questions, make sure everyone answers similar numbers of questions. One person shouldn’t answer most of them.

Don’t ever swap laptops. Have everyone present from the same laptop.