Anyone seen the laptop with the Software on it?

I always plan to arrive at tradeshows, demos, and exercises unreasonably early, for setup time.   Just getting an unfiltered Internet connection at tradeshows or customer offices, required for demos, can be very difficult and time consuming – leading to delayed meetings, demos not working, and much in the way of horsing around in front of the customer (not good).   Often, our demos require WebEx or IPSec VPN, and often that’s not allowed on a guest network.

I usually have at least one backup plan for Internet connections – these days I bring a Verizon cellualar modem with my laptop, just in case.    It’s allowed me to do customer demos in the lobbies, or outdoors if necessary, at customer locations that were unable to give me Internet.

Last night was fun.    Arrived a day early at the C4 Tradeshow to discover that the marketing team had expected me to bring the demo laptop with me.    The engineers had expected the marketing people to bring the laptop.   Could have been bad, yes?    Fortuneatly, I had the software loaded on at VM on my personal laptop, and with a call back to HQ, reconfiguring the IPs and credentials required for the laptop to talk to our demo gear, all was well.    Only took 2 hours of trouble shooting!

Do you have demo-prep tips to share?

Posted in

Archives