Steve Ballmer
Keynotes

As a Developer Advocate at Microsoft I gave live demos in Steve Ballmer's keynotes. The highest-energy stage in tech, and a demo failure there had absolutely nowhere to hide.

Below is one of them: my Internet Explorer 9 demo in his keynote at UK Tech Days in October 2010, showing what the new browser could do with HTML5.

Performing live code in front of thousands taught me everything I now use on the other side of the curtain: pacing, recovery, why rehearsal is the whole job, and how to sweat invisibly.