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Twilio also had a very powerful stock demo, which is (IMHO) the best demo since the Mother of All Demos. You've seen it if you've ever seen a Twilio demo.

If you haven't: the presenter "live codes" a quick Twilio application in front of the audience, showing a server-side program which serves TwiML (Twilio markup) that does some trivia action, like "Say hiya to the caller." They then have one person call a number which connects them to the application. It says hiya to them.

People clap a little.

Then they ask the entire room to call the same app. It says hiya to everyone.

People clap a lot.

Then they say "We can get the list of numbers which just called our number from the API, in one line of code. Here, let me print some on the screen with the last four digits covered." Nervous laughter happens.

"And then I'm going to have it call all of you, and bridge you into a teleconference."

Presenter hits enter. Every phone in the room rings at once. Crowd goes wild.

I've seen this demo 15 times and it never ceases to be absolutely magical.



I did that demo 2-3 times per week for over two years. It was fun.

The best time ever was when I presented to Bob Metcalfe's class and he heckled me: https://twitter.com/CaseySoftware/status/170301958727536640

I got him back in my closing though: https://twitter.com/CaseySoftware/status/170304358905425920


The biggest crowd this was ever done with was NY Tech Meetup and it was bonkers: http://johndbritton.com/2010/08/04/live-coding-demo-at-new-y... (too bad the video doesn't work...looking for another).

Fred Wilson also wrote about that one: http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/08/how-to-pitch-a-product.html


"...my birth cry will be the sound of every phone on this planet ringing in unison."


Lawnmower Man?


Yes sir.

Circa 1992 and seemed strangely appropriate.


I saw this done in person at the NY Tech Meetup, probably around 2010 or so, and it was the most effective startup presentation I have ever seen.


I'm sorry, but while impressive, it's nowhere near the mother of all demos. There's only one video out there that impressed me as much as the mother of all demos.


care to mention which one it is?


Bret Victor's inventing on principle


Does anyone have a video of this?


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S50bqKrTBkY

I remember Twilio giving this exact demo in 2009, though I can't find the video. There were audible gasps from the audience back then, the moment people realized their web development skills suddenly applied to telephony.




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