DrawMatic

Whoops! (Demoing Rails)

Posted by Gavin Doughtie Sat, 14 Jan 2006 21:30:00 GMT

I gave a Ruby on Rails demo recently at LAJUG, inaugurating their 10th year of operation since I started it in 1996.

I spent good many days writing a rudimentary outlining application to produce a PowerPoint-style slideshow.

Each day (and sometimes twice a day) I would execute “rails present” and proceed to rebuild my entire application from scratch so I could do a fluid presentation for the group.

I learned a few things about creating a good Rails demo, so here they are:

First, if you’re like me and the joy in programming is creating new functionality, be especially careful about feature creep. I probably blew an entire day fooling around with features I didn’t need to show. (Reording lists via AJAX calls comes to mind).

If you’re just trying to duplicate David Heinemeier Hansson’s excellent “Whoops!” screencast, then watch it as many times as you can stomach and make sure you can duplicate it screen for screen. There’s worse things you can do.

Practice, practice, practice!

Unlike more conceptual presentations, a good Ruby on Rails presentation, especially an intro presentation, should include running code. Running code means you need to rehearse, saying out loud what you intend to say as you do your demo, and looking for gaps in your presentation.