In Sillicon Valley, the start-up culture is hungry for talent and companies end up promising the world to attract the brightest and the best.

are you being served?

Wealthfront, an organisation that assists in the management of wealth has created a tool to measure what employees and equity holders within a Sillicon Valley start-up are being paid. By using HR information usually hidden in dusty filing cabinets but liberated by technological advances, Wealthfront has been able to provide an interactive salary and equity compensation chart.

Over the last few days I was attending a company conference. This is where we thank our clients for being awesome, show them awesome new products and generally let everyone have an awesome time. Awesome!

Enter the iPad.

We tested our demonstration in the office - it worked like a charm. Connected to our private Wi-Fi access point, routed to our standalone demo server and there was morning and evening and we saw that it was all good.

Lets face it: software is boring. What is more boring is showing software to someone who cannot do anything (like move the mouse or click it) but is powerless, having to watch someone else drive the computer.

All software demonstrations require some element of relevance in order to be effective. That means that the demonstrator needs to gauge the audience, their needs, the ability at which they can keep up to the demo and a whole host of other things. 

For me, I use the SAND method:

In the world of enterprise software, business to business sales and complex enterprise content management projects there is a nefarious little term that is a demo dolly.

A demo dolly is a person who essentially demonstrates a particular aspect of the enterprise software solution to other people. Usually performed by a pre-sales or a technically-minded sales person. It's a flirtatious, self-deprecating form of humour. A lot of planning, skill and more planning goes into a demonstration.