Demo Day

More a note for myself, just a little placeholder for the future to look back on.

Gave a big demo/presentation of a project at work. It was the culmination of 2.5+ months of development (and a bit more beyond that, for planning). This was a project I was given to lead, and got to help shepherd from start to finish.

A great deal of work went into building the feature (a set of guided workflows for adjustments). And while I added to the codebase, I also handled a lot of the planning and things on the project management side of things to boot.

We still have some bugs to work out (iterative process, anyone). But we’ve got set dates in mind, making this feature available to a small group to QA, then a larger group, then to everyone.

But today was the demo day. With us showing things, small blemishes and all, to our respective stakeholders. It’s been a long while since something at work made me this nervous, and a lot of the prep work happened earlier in the day.

That said, things went well and I’d like to think the presentation was well-received. I got the fun job of showing off the work, but it really was the culmination of a lot of people’s efforts, across multiple teams.

It’s been a very busy time, these last few months. And I’ve struggled with a tendency to overwork, or to overcompensate other things with work. With the demo done, and the path for the next few weeks clearer and less ambiguous… I think I may very well be close to the start of the calm.

[photo via Chris Montgomery]

Related:
An Introvert’s Guide to Better Presentations
Hackathon, Semi-Finals
Hackathon, Finals