Last week was the 55th anniversary of Douglas Engelbart's Mother of All Demos—the nexus point of inspiration for those who work with computers and software. I'm perplexed to this day on how so many objects we use and concepts propelled multiple generations of work: graphical user interface, mouse input, hyperlinking, collaborative editing, etc. The anniversary of this historic moment had me thinking how powerful the act of giving a demo is. A demo is an action or process of showing the existence or truth of something by giving proof or evidence.

Replit has a strong demo culture. Our iteration cycles are weekly and showing your work is important. I joke that everything at work is demoed. It could be a feature on your local environment or a spreadsheet you’re building. In this post, we’ll look at what makes a great demo and the positive impact it has on the culture of companies.

What makes a great demo

If you feel like you've never done demos or feel uncertain about where to start, the chances are you’ve done this throughout your childhood. The rawest form of a demo is show and tell in elementary school. Kids would bring their favorite toy, book, or object to share with the others about it, answer questions, and get people excited about it.

Now that you realize giving a demo is as simple as a session of show and tell, let’s cover a few pointers to conduct a demo that keeps the audience engaged with what you’re sharing.

Rightsize the narrative

There is no optimal amount of time for a demo. Engelbart's was an hour and a half, but a great demo might only need five minutes. Rightsize the time you need to tell a great narrative in a demo. If you're showing something complex and require multiple mini-demos within it, give yourself more time. If you're sharing how a re-designed workflow in a feature will increase productivity, it might be short and sweet.

Dramatic pause

Antonio Calculon in Futurama teaches us to leverage the dramatic..............pause. Hold moments to give people to soak in what you're sharing. giving a demo can be nerve-wracking and what people typically do is speed run through it. Pause, give yourself time to walk through the demo at the appropriate pace, and for the audience to experience it.

Voice over what you're doing

There are two mistakes I typically see in storytelling. The first mistake is when someone talks every single word on the slide vs. voicing over the content of it. The second is giving a demo where you don't say anything and expect the audience to know precisely what is happening on screen. When you give a demo, give the audience anticipation of what they'll see. Give the audience the director's commentary.

Use realistic content

Provide the most realistic scenario possible when giving a demo. It's additional work, but it punches up the story. Using Lorem ipsum, unrealistic data, or a rare use case makes the demo feel less real. At One Medical, I would demo the staging environment with realistic data and patient conditions in the workflow. It helped the clinicians have a bit more confidence that I was empathetic to their workflows.

A culture of demos

Saying you need to build a culture of showing actual work sounds incredibly un-insightful and obvious, yet many companies struggle with it. There are many times companies fall into the trap of perceived work such as creating docs and having meetings—tools and processes that are necessary but do not go into the depth of the actual work.

Builds proof

The demo is the artifact of a proof of concept. It shows to the audience (and you) that the idea is tangible and achievable. Demos are also like showing your work in math problems. It gives people a sense of how you approach solving the problem and gives them helpful context on how to solve similar ones.

Personal accountability

The intention of demo culture is not to pressure everyone to have work to show. Great demo culture is inspiring to others when they see the work to make progress on their work to show—a personal sense of accountability. When you see everyone around you building and showing, it compels you to do the same—all lifting each other.

Inspires

Finally, the most important aspect of demo culture is it inspires people through great storytelling and invoking possibility. Building software and companies is hard, and inevitably you’ll hit adversity or things not moving as fast as you’d like. A great demo that shows progress is usually what teams need to see to keep going.

Demo culture is progress toward the vision

Amjad Masad, CEO of Replit, always emphasizes the importance of showing progress. This doesn't mean all our work will be done within a week, but sharing progress allows feedback, conversation, and iteration to occur—a momentum-based culture of work.

The process does not equate to progress, but a demo-based process invokes progress. The demo shows that what you aim to achieve can be done and how far (or close) you are away from it.