{"id":38543,"date":"2025-06-20T15:49:59","date_gmt":"2025-06-20T15:49:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/greatdemo.com\/?p=38543"},"modified":"2025-06-20T15:49:59","modified_gmt":"2025-06-20T15:49:59","slug":"the-system-is-a-bit-slow-right-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/greatdemo.com\/the-system-is-a-bit-slow-right-now\/","title":{"rendered":"The System Is a Bit Slow Right Now\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dealing with software disasters can cause frustration, fear, and panic, and sometimes surprising elegance.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cProgramming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013\u00a0Rick Cook<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A vendor team was presenting a face-to-face demo at a prospect\u2019s site and the meeting was nearly complete. The vendor team included the salesperson, a senior technical person, and a presales practitioner.<\/p>\n

The presales player completed the demo, leaving the most exciting screen on the display.<\/p>\n

The senior technical person began a Q & A session and was handling answers verbally. A question was raised, which normally could be answered beautifully with a visual example using the software.<\/p>\n

The senior technical person turned to the presales person and asked them to show that capability.<\/p>\n

The presales player responded, \u201cThe system is slow right now\u2026 Why don\u2019t we wait until afterwards?\u201d<\/p>\n

The senior technical person persisted, saying, \u201cOh come on, let\u2019s go ahead and show that capability.\u201d<\/p>\n

The presales person said, with some strong emphasis, \u201cThe system is really<\/em> slow right now\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

The senior technical person suddenly understood: The laptop had crashed at the final screen!\u00a0 The presales player was cool, calm, and confident, and had simply moved smoothly into the summary.<\/p>\n

The audience had no clue that there had been a crash or any problem!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Moral: Now that\u2019s<\/em> a Great Demo!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

If you are enjoying this series of posts, grab a copy of \u201cSuspending Disbelief\u201d<\/em> \u2013 it delivers 35 more bitesize, fun, engaging stories: https:\/\/tinyurl.com\/yc7rsrmy<\/a><\/p>\n

For more practices on dealing bugs, crashes, and other demo disasters see page 390 in Great Demo!<\/em>: https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/dp\/B0C9SNKC2Y\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dealing with software disasters can cause frustration, fear, and panic, and sometimes surprising elegance.   \u201cProgramming today is a race between software engineers striving<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":38544,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[7],"class_list":["post-38543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-humor","tag-blog"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatdemo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatdemo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatdemo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatdemo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatdemo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38543"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/greatdemo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38543\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38545,"href":"https:\/\/greatdemo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38543\/revisions\/38545"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatdemo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatdemo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatdemo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatdemo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}