First practice pitch reactions

Last Monday we presented our Demigod project to the rest of the class. This was a kind of practice pitch, including a demo, in order to train our final presentation that will be held at the end of the semester.

We met the day before the pitch (Sunday), and we designed a Power Point presentation trying to keep in mind the recommendations that Professor Ackley commented in the last class, as well as taking some things from The Business Model Canvas. After several hours of work, we finally got a seven slides presentation. Additionally, Natalie created a brief handout that we distributed among the rest of the teams, and Matt F. recorded a short video (roughly 1 minute) to show as a demo of the website, because we did not want to take risks displaying the demo "on the fly".

Apart from some screen resolution problems when displayed the video, I think that the demo in general was good, and Matt S. made a great pitch. However, we made some important mistakes, most of them, prior to the practice pitch itself. During the questions time, we received some useful feedback from both the classmates and Professor Ackley:

- Too much text on both the slides and the handout (I think that this was our main weakness).
- Tons of background facts (We should have moved some of the facts to other sheet, and occasionally mention these facts during the pitch).
- Set-up issues in the pitch, because the screen did not fit properly.
- Video demo was Ok, because we needed to simulate a full challenge check-in process. As Matt F. edited the video by cutting the waiting times between check-ins, this helped us to reduce the demo time.
- Maybe more "success effects", something like "fireworks" when you achieve a challenge. This kind of things could help the keep users motivated.
- Do not use the word "Kickbacks" in a presentation...
- Professor Ackley and some classmates checked the online version of the website on their mobile phones. It seems that they like it.

Summarizing, we need to put much more attention (and more time) in the final pitch, because the practice one was good, but probably less professional than we expected. We should focus on improving the quality of the slides, as well as do not leave the pitch preparation to the day before the presentation. "Procrastination is the thief of time".