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Sorry, perhaps I am doing things wrong, but when I give demos to customers or potential investors it's always with ~1 day old trunk.

Do people really just show screenshots or screencasts?

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Screencasts are just plain smart when you have your demo, your single shot, your company, on the line. Don't count on the internet working anywhere (especially not a VC's conference room), or EC2 staying up, or your server on your laptop staying up. Give a well paced talk over a perfect screencast and nail it. It's not worth the risk - ever.

I've been doing demo's for years, and have performed hundreds and maybe I have been lucky, but have had no major issues.

Our demos are also usually performed with trunk code or 1-2 days old at most.

How do you handle it when you get a question about a particular aspect and can't show it?

You can show it - you should always have access to your app, whether locally on your pres machine or remotely via the hosts internet, but never, never, leave the presentation demo up to chance. There are enough risks in this process, why add one more huge one?

And yes, you've been VERY lucky. :)

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