emphasize the live demo

what happened

the presentation wasn't that great — should have emphasized live demo more. spent too much time on slides when judges wanted to see the thing actually work.

why it's a gotcha

judges at hackathons care about working software. packing slides with code snippets and architecture diagrams puts them to sleep. they want to see you click buttons and have things happen.

the fix

structure your presentation as: 30 seconds of problem/context, then live demo for as long as you can. slides should support the demo, not replace it. of course, the demo has to actually work first, and you need a backup plan for when it doesn't. the demo itself needs a story — don't jump between features randomly.