Never Underestimate the Power of a Demo - 9 January 2024

Early in my career, I worked for a guy named Dave Harms.  Dave supervised a hardware development group at Bell Labs and he was energetic and inspiring.  Furthermore, Dave was a builder and the group was designing a laptop.  We did not really have that word "laptop" at the time as all personal computers and workstations were desktops or "luggables", but Dave was not content with those form factors.  He wanted a laptop built around our new Mac-32 chip.

To illustrate the design concept, Dave went into the lab with the parts list from the design.  He grabbed a printed circuit board that was about the right size; the standard printed circuit board used in the Bell System at the time was about 8x10 inches (roughly) and all the possible hole positions were drilled out.  (A key challenge during board layout was to find enough room to run the signal paths between all the holes.)  Then Dave went into the parts inventory room and picked out parts that were the right size as called out on the parts list.  These were not the right parts, they were just the right sizes - 14-pin, 16-pin, 24-pin, and so on, as described on the parts list.  He put the parts into the printed circuit board (remember that all the holes were already drilled), assembling a simula of the ultimate design.  He bent the pins a bit so that they would stay in place in the board but still be usable on other projects.  Then Dave went to a meeting to propose the project.

Dave started out with the usual slides.  At the time, these were all hand drawn, but he went through the various points for the design.  The size, who would buy it, the computing and display capabilities, and so on.  People were interested but not very.  They were polite.

Then Dave pulled out his "demo" board and passed it around.  The room was electrified.

When people could "see" the "actual" board, not just slides and talk, but a physical mockup, they went from polite interest in the idea to supporting the idea.  It was like a switch was thrown and the lights came on.

The lesson from this experience was clear to me and I carried it forward.  Never underestimate the power of a demonstration.  People want to put their hands on the idea, and a demo can give that to them.

ETA: What triggered this little story?  A recent news article in FastCompany reports that "recently, Microsoft built a clock."  A research group in the Microsoft Quantum department went out and bought an off-the-shelf clock and "dressed up its enclosure by adding the logo of Azure Quantum Elements".  And...

The point of this little DIY project was to prove the batteries worked in a visceral way: "You want to have a wow moment," explains Brian Bilodeau, the head of partnerships, strategy, and operations for Azure Quantum. And the person the quantum team hoped to wow was Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. -- FastCompany article.

So there you have it.  The research team wanted to put the batteries on display, so they built a demo using a cheap clock and some artwork, then presented it to the CEO of the corporation in order to get his attention and support.  The Power of a Demo, right there.