The art of the demo

Michael Rogers Columnist • Profile • E-mail

Last week saw what has become a tradition for Apple enthusiasts: following the usual deep-secret build-up, Steve Jobs showed off the latest Mac mini onstage in Cupertino, Calif., as breathless tech bloggers filed minute-by-minute updates. Over the years, Jobs has become a master of the technology art form known as the “demo.” In fact, if Steve hadn’t had that knack for computers, he almost certainly could have made an alternative fortune selling kitchen gadgets on late-night cable television. 

The power of the demo should never be underestimated: one changed my career, back in the mid-Eighties. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates invited a bunch of writers, publishers and technologists to Redmond, Wash., for a conference called “The New Papyrus,” to extol the virtues of the newly-developed CD-ROM as a vehicle for interactive content. The highpoint of the conference was his presentation of the interactive encyclopedia that the CD-ROM would make possible. It was an astounding demo to witness back in 1986: on the entry for Martin Luther King Jr., you could not only see photos and read text, you could hear the “I Have a Dream” speech and actually view video as well. 

I was sold, and immediately decided to abandon the paper and ink world and move into interactive multimedia. But what I didn’t know was that Bill’s demo was radically distant from anything that was even vaguely possible with CD-ROMs at the time. I ended up slogging through years of trying desperately to get video and audio to work on a whole parade of now-defunct devices and software. And ironically, about ten years later, still trying to get multimedia right, I ran into the guy who had programmed Gates’ interactive encyclopedia back at the conference that changed my life.  “Oh sure,” he said casually, “I remember that demo. An AT&T minicomputer, running behind the curtain.”

But by then, I was already deep into the world of demos myself. It started with an interactive CD-ROM version of Newsweek, complete with audio and video, that ran on an early Sony product with an LCD screen that looked a lot like today’s portable DVD players. The little multimedia player was a very cool device and far ahead of its time — but it was also, unfortunately, as slow as molasses.  When you started to play a disk it seemed to take decades for the Newsweek logo to appear on screen, and then another geologic era before the announcer said “Welcome to Newsweek Interactive!”

I soon discovered, however, that you could actually start up the disk, wait through the interminable loading period, and then go back to the beginning of the program. As long as you didn’t turn the power off, the introductory segment would then start to play almost instantly.  Thus, as I went around the country demonstrating the device to reporters or on televisions shows, I always made certain that I’d performed this little sleight-of-hand before the presentation began. By the unwritten code of the demo, this wasn’t lying — I was simply showing the machine to its best advantage. 

As we continued to put Newsweek content onto new devices and services, my demo skills improved. No matter how buggy the software or Web site, I would spend hours plotting a path through the product that worked perfectly once the cameras were rolling or the reporter or audience was watching. Again, I didn’t consider this dishonest. I knew these bugs were simply blemishes that would soon disappear. It was a proud moment when a software developer introduced me to a colleague with this accolade: “Michael can demo a dead dog.”

I had certain standards: I always used the actual program running on the hardware for which it was intended. But not all demos follow those rules. In the mid-Nineties I attended an advertising convention to show off the latest version of online Newsweek, and arranged for a telephone line to log on for my demonstration. Even though I used a special number for the very latest 14.4 K connection, the demo was still excruciatingly slow, as was most online content in those days. But after my presentation, a guy from a certain competing newsweekly came up to do his demo of their online version, and ignored the telephone line entirely. He had stored their entire site on a hard drive, so his demo was, by comparison, lightning fast. Back then, most advertising executives didn’t know a modem from a motorboat, so my rival won that bake-off quite handily.

MORE FROM PRACTICAL FUTURIST

Practical Futurist Section Front

Will the Internet transform storytelling? What evolutionary psychology says about social networking At this radio network, the audience is the star Is the Internet dumbing us down? Who will fix my wired (and wireless) home? Will road warriors choose electrons over airplanes? Who will be the TV Guide of the Internet? Why is U.S. always last for new phones? Weighing the risks of biotechnology What will make the laptop obsolete? Practical Futurist Section Front   Add Practical Futurist headlines to your news reader: