no backup plan for a failed demo

(common gotcha)

what happened

live demo crashes on stage. team freezes. awkward silence. judges move on.

why it's a gotcha

live demos fail. wifi goes down, APIs time out, databases crash. if your entire presentation depends on everything working perfectly, you're gambling. and environmental differences between your laptop and the demo setup make failure more likely than you think.

the fix

record a screen capture of the full demo working beforehand. if the live demo crashes, switch to the video immediately — don't waste time debugging on stage. say "let me show you the recording" and keep moving. of course, the best approach is to reduce the chance of failure in the first place — including restarting services right before presenting.