I've never been so scared to enter a meeting. I had to demonstrate
Inectis to a client. Six guys from marketing, teamed up with three guys
from IT, beating me and my little child up to death... I was sweating
cold, worried, bloody sweat. My hands were shaking. I smoked like half
a pack of cigarretes in the way to the client's office. I could barely
pay attention to my driving... but, somehow, deep inside, I was
confident that everything was going to work right the first time.
This is the first time I've ever needed to demo a product to a client.
I've spent all my programming life developing in-house code - you
hardly know of anyone developing products down here in Brazil - and it
was a veeeeery weird for me to show a product I've developed according
to my own specs, my own architecture, my own, carefully hand-picked
tools.
I enter the meeting room, greet everyone and start my presentation. The
product was already sold, they just wanted to know how it looked like,
and how to use it. Great, I started Tomcat, typed the URL on the
browser, and some IT guy interrupts me:
- What's that localhost URL?
Shocked, I was so nervous I started explaining
it to him. In normal mental and behavioural conditions, I'd start to
laugh my ass off from the fact that this guy, asking me what is
localhost, was working on the IT department, and he was expected to ask
me the smart questions. "Poor Carlos, ", I thought, "you still gonna
have to explain these guys what Prevayler is...", getting even more
nervous.
Their homepage shows up on an empty Inectis install. Everyone starts
whispering and making faces, but I couldn't understand what their
reaction was. I keep showing them around, the website layout, images, a
clever Flash hack I did to show dynamic themeable menus, etc, etc, etc.
A marketing guy raises his hand. "What?", I say, already thinking about
what question could be dumber than "what's localhost?".
- Congratulations for your job, boy. Great stuff. I think we already
understood the website layout, and we liked it a lot, but where's the
administrative interface?
Oh god, the marketing guy asked a question way way more intelligent
than the IT guy. What's this? The Twilight Zone? Okay, fella, you
wanted an administrative interface, you got it.
Frowny faces.
Frowny!? Damn, I spent more time on this interface than on modelling the system! How can anyone frown upon this?
"Can you change the logo placement?"
I wanted to scream, run, punch his face, throw my laptop out the
window, but I ended up joining all my forces, all my strenght, resisted
as much as I could, and answered with a dry "yes, of course".
Then I thought to myself - hey, this is a good thing - they didn't
complained about the interface itself, they complained about something
stupid as the logo placement. That's good, definitely good. Sometimes I
start thinking in english, as if someone could listen to me, at least
they wouldn't understand, being portuguese speakers. After showing the
admin stuff a little, one of theirs cellphones rang. They had another
meeting, and I was interrupted. They apologized, and one of the
marketing guys asked me when it's going to be on production. Won't you
at least test it? No, no time for that. Next week, my baby is on
production. This is as cool as it gets. They gave me full permission to
install it directly on production. Now guess who they're going to blame
when some odd things happen with that COBOL application running in
their basement? Me. Great.
Hey, what the heck, I'm complaining already!? Damn, my little baby is
going on production! I couldn't stop grinning after I thought that. I
got out of the building with a smile that could make a suicidal rethink
his life. I called Vanessa (my girlfriend, not this Vanessa),
and I told her everything. She was happy about it, of course... I got
into my car, my legs were shaking, I could barely drive home, but I
did... I turn my laptop on and start to write this post.... I started singing Macy Gray's Demons:
All of your demons will wither away
Ecstasy comes and they cannot stay
You'll understand when you come my way
Coz all of demons have withered away
Now, I got a real powerful drug: happiness. When I think about the
miserable state of my room, when I see my bank account's overly negative balance, and
start to get real sad, that's ok, I can now re-build Inectis, see
AspectWerkz spreading magic all over my lousy code... I start up the
webserver, and now all I can see is a beautiful system, doing it's
beautiful job, with a beautiful administrative interface... that needs
a change of logo placement.
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