Why I Won’t Miss Demo Day, Even With a Migraine

By Tone Garot

This morning started well enough—I got up, shaved, showered, put on a shirt and tie. We do things a little differently by dressing ‘business formal’ on Fridays. This Friday was also Demo Day: my favorite day of the week. Little did I know as I went off to work that I’d be crawling my way back home earlier than usual.

About 20 minutes after arriving to work, a headache started. But it wasn’t just a headache. It was a migraine, and it wasn’t going to go away. It became bad enough that colleagues noted my snappishness. I went down to my truck to close my eyes just after pre-demo. I tried every trick in the book—temple massage, covering eyes, shaking head—but this headache had sunk its talons into me and would not let go.

Perhaps I should have just gone home to lay down like most people do but not today. Today is Demo Day. Our client drives 90 minutes every two weeks to see his project’s deliverable product increment. I wasn’t going to let him, or Praxent, down. Oh, my colleagues could have easily handled the whole demo themselves. My part was only 20 to 30 minutes long. So again, perhaps, I should have just left.

But…

There is something about working for a custom software development company that delivers ambitious software. This isn’t a job in which we just churn out code. I want my client to succeed, and I want to maintain a personalized connection so that my client knows this. I want to show we listened and we are incorporating his requests. I don’t want to deliver empty promises like his last software vendor did.

Also, I just plain like the guy and I wanted to be there to greet him. The stories he tells of what goes on in his profession are fascinating. I was also excited to show some of the magic our designer did to the UI. Not only did the application look good, it’s at the penultimate step to being mobile ready.

So, I gave my part of the demo, and I believe (I hope) it went well. Then I excused myself and somehow made it home.

Six hours later, I am feeling almost human again. What’s more, I’m happy I didn’t miss out on my favorite day of the week…or the look on my client’s face when he shares his enthusiasm over our progress.

We often hear about custom software developers who are either too apathetic or incapable of providing a personalized touch. They don’t listen, discuss, or envision what their clients are asking. It’s not too much to ask for a software development team to want to go the extra mile and share your passion. You just need to know how to find them.