How many times have given a demo and it goes nothing like you planned?  It doesn’t matter how much you prepare, what precautions you take or the support system you have, sometimes it can all just go bad.  The question is, how do you deal with it?

When I was just starting out, I was working with a help desk/service desk product.  We decided to rewrite the user interface over a long holiday weekend to showcase some changes to a VP at a large company.  This could make or break the deal.

For the demo, I prepped, ran through the new interface time and time again, and thought I had it down.  The room was filled with me and my company’s VP and sales guy.  I was presenting to a VP and one of his directors.  While presenting to them, the product did not function as expected.

The question is, how do you handle it?

There are several schools of thought on this:

• Point it out.. after all, it’s the pink elephant dancing in the middle of the room.
• Apologize
• Try it again
• Struggle and try to fix it
• Ignore it

Some people will let a problem consume them and the demo.  And when this happens, the problem becomes far worse.  It gets you completely off message and while you are struggling with the thought that something has gone wrong, you aren’t concentrating on the message or how you are presenting.

Here’s a Bill Gates demo gone wrong:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwNTTAhAWOE&feature=fvst

There are interesting dynamics here. It is live TV. There’s a large audience. There’s a known problem with Window’s crashing, the so-called BSOD (Blue screen of death). It’s Bill Gates. And Bill Gates decides to point out the elephant in the room. There’s no getting past this. And the audience reaction is to laugh. But will this work for you?

The most likely answer is no.  But why?

When giving a demo to a large audience, there are different factors.  Humor is used to build a rapport.  The audience has to be drawn in.  If the audience was small, the dynamic is completely different and this wouldn’t have been so easily pulled off.

Notice how this one works, or really doesn’t:

Obviously, this issue isn’t going to go away and you have a large audience in front of you.  To make matters worse, you have someone in the room trying to add levity to the situation. And you can see the frustration on Bill Gates’ face.

Even the best, have their fair share of issues.  In this video, Steve Jobs, who is arguably at the top of his game during this demo, has a failure demonstrating a new iPhone feature.  In fact, this goes on for a while.

It spirals until they realize what may have been causing the issue: so many wifi devices on at the same time.  But it only took 20 minutes to figure this out.

So, how do you handle the problem of technology going wrong?

It depends on the situation.  If the everything stops and you can’t show it, you are going to have a very long demo.  Often times it is best to take a break and work on it, if you can.  This is especially useful if you are part of a long series of demos or the presentation is hours long.  While people are doing bathroom breaks, making calls, checking emails or eating, you have the opportunity to fix things.  But this isn’t always possible.

Small failures during the demo happen more often.  You click something and it doesn’t respond, the wrong window comes up, a message is displayed that you weren’t aware of, etc.  These little failures occur all the time.

During my demo to the VP, I clicked on the window and it didn’t react.  Nothing happened.  It was a smaller part of my demo and I just moved on.

The secret is simple.  You are aware of every problem your demo has.  It didn’t work the way you wanted it to.  By bypassing the problem and moving on quickly, your audience may not pick up on the problem.  You moved on and onto a better topic.  And the audience moved along with you.

Don’t let it consume your demo.

While walking out of the building, I wasn’t overly happy with my portion of the presentation.  I knew I had failed even though the customer said they wanted to work with us.  My VP looked over at me and said, “You did that right.  I saw the problem but you moved right along and didn’t let it affect the demo.  Many people would have been stuck on that trying to fix it.”

We know technology can be fragile.  It’s how you handle the problem and yourself that determines how the demo is perceived.  In one case, Bill Gates pulled it off well.  And another, not so much.  The question is:  What are you going to do when it happens to you?