Demo Day x2: Sweaters Change, Lessons Stay

Explaining what’s on the screen during my courageous live demo on day #1 of the Hamburg 2025 CMS Experts meeting

At the CMS Expert group meeting earlier this week, I received what you could call a refreshing crash course in live demo survival - and walked away with some valuable lessons.

The meeting was held at the diconium office in Hamburg with their harbor as stunning backdrop and so at the end of day #1, I started a live demo wearing my pink sweater, and I thought I was thoroughly prepared.

Then I took a creative turn and veered off script. I figured it’d be fun to show something unexpected - until the unexpected hit me back! The result wasn’t what I anticipated, and I was stuck. I kept hitting the same obstacle, just from different angles, trying to stay composed and lean on humor to salvage the situation. The issue wasn’t even with StreamX itself, the search box input in the demo project had a little bug.

Thankfully, the digital leaders in the room, just as Janus Boye claimed, proved to be a friendly, supportive and curious group and we agreed to try again on the morning of day #2 of the meeting.

In my focused mode on the morning of day #2 in Hamburg - I showed what I wanted, the demo worked, but something was missing.

The next morning I successfully demonstrated StreamX with my ivory sweater and this time all went well. Or shall I say, I managed to present what I wanted! But, I was so focused on not making mistakes that I lost sight of the storytelling - no problem framing, no promised world, no relatable actors. Thankfully, StreamX is a powerful solution that showed its potential anyway.

The two photos, taken 9 hours apart, capture the ride. You wouldn’t know from the pictures which demo went sideways and which was OK. But I know that I failed at first, but came away with something important.

What I learned from live demos in Hamburg

First of all, preparation is key, but in live demos everything can happen so adaptability is equally important.

Secondly, a successful demo is more than flawless execution; it benefits from a compelling story. Our product solves an e-commerce problem much faster than most customers are used to. I could have explained the use case, dived into the pain and brought everyone with me on the journey.

Thirdly, feedback is a gift — on both the product (positive) and my demoing (constructive).

Growth happens in these moments. And while I don’t believe in overhyping failure, I can already say this lesson paid off. The very next demo for a potential customer went smooth as butter.

Here’s to learning, iterating, and delivering better demos every day!

Thanks to Bernd Burkert for hosting us at diconium, and in particular to Jonathan Healey for a useful reminder on focusing on the big problem.

Learn more about live demos — and see them soon again

Think about how important the driving experience is when you buy a car. Would you buy a car just based on some slides? Or perhaps more in the same price range, would you buy a house to live in just based on a fancy deck from a slick realtor? No, you wouldn't, right? But why are so many then buying enterprise software, upwards of millions of dollars, without actually trying it out?

Or like our CMS Experts community leader Matthew McQueeny recently said:

“Software presentations without live demos are akin to concerts without the band playing the songs”

To keep the art of the live demo going, we’ve integrated them into our group meetings and conferences for the past decade and you can experience it next at these upcoming events:

You can also read more about live demos in these posts, which covers winning live demos at our recent conferences: