Creating a Retail Demo for Apple
swiftjectivec.com
swiftjectivec.com
The demos were carefully crafted between the ISVs, Microsoft's marketing, and for the real bleeding edge stuff, Microsoft's own developers.
What I remember most is how carefully the machines were setup. We'd come up with install scripts and manual installation steps that were designed to ensure maximum stability for what were often beta releases. The entire process was designed to be repeatable again and again with excellent documentation so if something popped up on the showroom floor getting back to a working state was as close to foolproof as possible.
[1] Obv. I did other things, but there was a lot of work around prepping for trade show demos.
I’m also curious how you structured the changes. Does this work exist on a separate branch that you’d need to update/replicate in order to push an update? Or did you merge it to master, and will be living with that added complexity during everyday development? Or something else?
One place I worked, we had a demo version of the product's web interface, and this is how we did it. Maintaining it wasn't fun, and people didn't pay much attention to it so it started to rot. We eventually removed it because marketing switched to something else because it was so bad, but I'm wondering if there's another way.
Granted, I’m sure the uptick in sales more than compensated OP for their time. If it didn’t, then this HN article probably will. :)
>Sales wise it’s been a huge help, as Spend Stack tends to consistently chart since its retail demo release. Before, it tends to dip in and out throughout the month.