• I wanted to write a post about demos since Sam Altman gave his famous OpenAI DevDay Keynote speech which reminded me of a lot of great Apple product presentations by Steve Jobs. The one where Steve introduced the iPod Nano in 2005 or the iPhone in 2007. You may think that Steve Jobs was a great mind, a great leader, and a great speaker, and who am I to cancel that. But I would say that the great products that Apple built with Steve Jobs leading the company were the most important piece that gave him great credibility to speak about product design, leadership, and business development topics and make a huge Worldwide influence lasting to this day (as I am writing this). Good job demonstrated in keynote talks, product presentations, or made publicly available to masses in any other form grants credibility, and leads to influence.

  • In a way, ChatGPT is a great demo of what AI and LLMs are capable of. Connecting its power to the masses may cost a fortune to process all the queries, but that (together with not so elegant failures of Bard, Gemini, and other competitors) gives massive credibility and influence to OpenAI and the man behind it - Sam Altman. Getting back to AI, LLMs, and neural networks - they are all not a new thing, however, they never felt that available and applicable to simple everyday human use before ChatGPT.

  • Even though demos can be a great tool to make an impact and create influence, it is important to remember that confidence does not equal competence. The Babble Effect explains how the most vocal person in the room is often seen and selected as the next potential leader. Similarly, I would put some blame on such an effect for a lot of nonsense happening in some democratic elections…

  • Demos, influence, and persuasion sound like pieces of the same puzzle. In a recent episode of Quality Bits podcast, Lina had Thomas Shipley and talked some cheese, but talked more about persuasion. And that is no wonder, as Thomas covers persuasion in his most recent conference talk. Thomas voiced that during the episode and I believe a lot of people would agree - talks in testing conferences are buzzing around very similar topics and ideas for a while. Therefore, those talks that have some unique perspective, unique angle, or completely untouched (yet super relatable) topics stand out from the crowd. I would say, Thomas’ talk about persuasion is one of those talks (as well as Lina’s talk about minimalism).

  • Finally, something to try out. It is no secret that I like small games to kill some time from time to time. Probably, most of all I like minimalistic puzzle games like 2048 or Wordle that examine my inner tester in a way - as you need to find some pattern or rule to do better. So, recently I found yet another variation of Wordle - Pixletters and spent some time designing and testing my best 1st move (or word). And if this variation of Wordle looks too easy for you - you can always try Semantle. Have a good time!