This discussion about demos at the PDC has got me thinking... I remember talking with Scott Guthrie about a demo he gave at a keynote a couple years ago. While running the demo on stage he had another PM back stage running through the demo at the exact same speed on an identical machine. The idea was that if something bizarre happened they could switch back to the other machine and not miss a beat. Scott's idea was that when you have 6,000 people watching anything that can fail, will - and you want the attendees to really see a nice polished demo.

I compare this to one of Anders Hejlsberg's keynote demos. He had found a late breaking bug in a component that he wanted to demo, so he got the developer to fix it and give him a private build - which he installed on his personal laptop. So Anders goes on stage in front of 6,000 people using his daily use laptop (that he hadn't reformatted in 3 years) with an untested private build of key component. No saftey net, nothing. It went off without a hitch.

Now I'm faced with giving a keynote demo in front of (what looks to be record breaking numbers) a huge crowd, my biggest audience yet (1,500 was my previous record). Will I do the full on saftey net? Will I fly without a harness?