Last night I presented RepTivity to a group of 30 attendees during Boston New Tech Meetup August 2011. First, I want to say thank you to Chris Requena and Dave Rafkind for organizing the event and a second thank you to Dave for letting me borrow his laptop! Yep, I had to borrow his laptop. Right as I was about to present, my mouse pad decided to lock up and my presentation froze. Dave quickly plugged his laptop into the overhead projected and launched my website. As I looked up at the big screen I internally said to myself, “oh thank God”. Thank God for Dave and his awesome act of kindness and because my recorded demo was featured on our homepage. All I had to do was click play and begin talking.
Imagine this scene, me the sales guy presenting in front of 30 plus technical folks and I can’t get my laptop or my presentation to work. Even worse, I went last and the five presenters before me had no problems whatsoever. I was definitely rattled for the first two minutes of the presentation but having my product demo running in the background helped me get into a groove. As the presentation continued I looked out into the crowd and noticed several smiles, head nods and intellectual face squints. What I was saying was making sense and more importantly this room of very smart people thought my product was pretty cool. I ended the presentation and fielded about ten to fifteen questions.
In the end, disaster was averted and the “techies” took it easy on me for my laptop debacle. I learned one lesson and was reminded of one thing. First, in crisis use the pre-recorded demo on your website and if you don’t have one – record one now! Second, in time of need people help people. Even though my situation wasn’t catastrophic the community last night was supportive and willing to help. So if I could summarize my experience with Boston Tech Meetup – It’s a Community of Supportive People Willing to Help.
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