An open call for keynote demo submissions for the 1998 JavaOne conference
If a picture is worth a thousand words, how many words is a demo worth? Actually demonstrating a piece of reality defies description — a fact illustrated by a simple example dating back to the sixth century B.C..
In one of his most famous teachings, the Buddha gathered all of his students together to give a sermon. But when it came time for him to speak, he merely lifted a lotus blossom over his head in silence. The Buddha’s philosophy of showing rather than telling demonstrated that direct experience exceeds language’s ability to describe the world. His technique was, in essence, what we call a demo. Demoing, the practice of showing rather than telling, has been particularly important to the growth of Java.
In my line of work, as a Java Evangelist, I’ve becomes well-acquainted with the inadequacy of words to describe Java’s potential. To date, I’ve described Java to almost 75,000 people in over 50 countries — and the numbers keep growing. This month, I’ve been back and forth between Europe and the U.S. three times. The funny thing is that quite a few of the people I’m evangelizing to barely speak my language. In Mexico, I am the “Hava” Evangelist, in Eastern Europe I am the “Yava” Evangelist, and in Japan I am the “Jyabba” Evangelist.
I’ve found that international audiences understand Java as well (or as poorly) as those in the U.S.. This is because the existing terminology and nomenclature are insufficient to describe Java. This can be frustrating, and it’s tempting to resort to reduction. One extreme (and opportunistic) reduction is to say that Java is just another programming language. Java is, obviously, a programming language, but it is also so much more. Java represents a shift in computing towards a network-centric design in which device diversity, device location, and operating system are abstracted away. The implications — some obvious, some obscure — are immense.
New paradigms
In 1962, in his book,
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Thomas Kuhn defined the word
paradigm
. Despite the fact that we tend to over-use (and often mischaracterize) the term, it does provide us with a useful way to conceptualize the models (for instance, the scientific model) by which we understand our world. A critical part of Kuhn’s theory describes the epistemology of the transformation of these models — or how new ideas creep into popular consciousness and alter the current paradigm. When such revolutionary concepts first begin to take hold, they are (in Kuhn’s words) “incommensurate” with the old language — that is, the new ideas encompass all of the old ideas, but the old systems of understanding simply are not capable of encompassing all of the new ways of thinking. Hence, it is difficult to describe the new paradigm in the language of the old one. Oren Harari’s influential article “
Turner and Gates: An Essay on Paradigms
,” in the April 1996 issue of
Management Review
, goes so far as to suggest that the more money you have invested in an old paradigm, the less ability you have to recognize emerging (read: threatening) forces in your field of endeavor.
The word demo is an abbreviation of demonstration, and that word is etymologically connected to the word monster, which, in turn, is connected to the word warning. Ancient maps of the world showed an edge which ships could fall off of, and labeled it “here be monsters.” Although we now know that the world isn’t flat, that concept was impossible for the ancients to understand. They had no language to adequately describe what was yet to be discovered. A warning, then, is a harbinger, an early indicator that change is imminent; change which is not necessarily definable in the current nomenclature. Moving into a new paradigm is a bit like falling off the edge of the map, there’s just no way of explaining what has happened to you in the terms of your previous view of the world.
Giving good demo
So, a demo is really a visit to another paradigm — a glimpse of the other side, a peek into the future. I’ve had plenty of experience in this realm; including giving Sun’s demo at Chris Shipley’s
and in front of Andy Grove’s (CEO of Intel) executive staff; I also managed the nine keynote demos at the JavaOne ’97 conference.
Demos are extremely high-pressure events because they either succeed or fail. When a demo fails, entire companies are compromised — CEOs look silly on stage, and embarrassment and anger fly about. Reputably, one of the most skilled of the demo-gods is Steve Jobs, who showed off Lotus 1-2-3 on a Macintosh back in 1984. This may not sound too unusual in and of itself, but what is well known today is that Lotus 1-2-3 was not ported to the Macintosh until years later! So, essentially, the demo was painting the screen, or hand waving as it is known in demo parlance. But then, that’s implicit in the very notion of a demo (remember, a harbinger or early indicator) — it is expected that you are selling a “mindshare” product, not a product ready for market.
I want to make an important distinction here: “Hand waving” at a demo is vastly different from “vaporware” and “FUD” tactics. Vaporware is announcing products that don’t exist and never will. FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) involves peddling misrepresentations, misconceptions, or outright lies about a technology or product for the express purpose of defeating it. What we might call effective marketing. At a software demo, everybody knows you are painting the screen, what you are demonstrating is not functioning code; rather, you are demonstrating that you have a fundamental understanding of the new or emerging paradigm. Steve Jobs demoed (past tense of the infinitive “to demo”) Lotus 1-2-3, but that was not a “lie,” even though a Mac version did not exist at that time. What Jobs captured on stage was the essence of a new paradigm, the experience of traveling in a new world.
So a demo is a mythic or representational form of truth that carries people into your vision. It reveals something about its creator’s understanding of the world, something magical. In that sense, it conveys the same kind of impact that an author like Arthur C. Clarke has when he introduces transformative and transcendent technologies in his works. (Clarke first introduced the idea of a geostationary satellite years before the first one was actually deployed.) But beyond that, a demo also needs to be bound to a single point in time, and there must be an opportunity for it to live or die, to crash or fly. This, more than anything else, adds a level of suspense and excitement to the process. It is what finally drives the point home like a dart — a single piercing moment under the hot lights, where companies live or die, and nascent technologies sink or fall off the edge of the world. Sound chaotic? It sure is. Instantiating such a creature (monster) to a fixed point in time results in a hard and fast deadline — one that cannot be missed.
Does this sound enticing? Like the kind of chaos you live for? Demos are full of opportunity (not just monetary, but yes, that happens, too). When the lights come on and your creation shines (or dully fizzles out), you have a tremendous opportunity to define a structure upon which the future may hang.
Your 15 minutes of fame
If this sounds interesting to you, I am extending an open invitation: I am looking for candidates for keynote demos for this year’s JavaOne. As you ponder your idea, recall some of the demos that graced the stage last year: Thomas Dolby’s Beatnik, NASA’s Hubble Space telescope, JPL’s Mars Pathfinder applet, the HTML bean, the
navigator, the “ActiveX Zone.” If you think your demo can compete with these fine examples, I encourage you to step up to the plate. Here is what I call my “Good demo checklist”:
- Does it show off new features of Java (for example, Java Foundation Classes)?
- Does it address a visionary market (for example, Nasa)?
- Does it expand our idea of what Java can do (for example, Javasound)?
- Does it play well on a screen (for example, Mars pathfinder)?
- Does it change the way we think (for example, Perspecta)?
- Does it illustrate a way of thinking about a technology (for example, ActiveX)?
Send your proposal to me at [email protected], and I will be glad to review it. Before you submit, keep in mind that you may have to come out to Cupertino to show off your demo, you may have to sign confidentiality agreements, and, if accepted, you may not sleep for a full month before JavaOne 1998! Thanks, and I look forward to your submissions. Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines!
