I Demoed Too Early
Last Friday I demoed my game WorldEnder.ai and it wasn't ready yet. I had too many slides, which were useless in the demo setting, and I was rushing to explain the core invention. If I could do it over again I wouldn’t change a thing.
After the demo, everyone I talked to was engaged in my problem space and had ideas that saved me from potential design decisions that would eat up time. Because I showed a notebook and quickly talked through several lines of code, the feedback I got and the ideas we brainstormed didn’t feel threatening to the project or like a waste of time. It is still early enough to make any change we want without much cost. The algorithm and gameplay driving mechanism, which unanimously got positive reactions, drove discussion about exciting possibilities and even got a few people wanting to contribute.
Over the weekend I got a contributor and a PR, and we are going to push it further at a hackathon next weekend. If you have a chance to demo, find something to demo and do it. You might find your team that way.