Demos

This guide to maximizing visual effects and optimizing graphics for game programming with C++ and DirectX is a practical introduction to the latest C++ technologies and techniques. The new concept of demo coding—a program whose purpose is to present the technical and artistic skills of programmers—is provided, as is help for programmers demonstrating their new skills in creating 2-D and 3-D games and demo scenes. An accompanying CD-ROM includes demo scenes, game-development projects, and examples from the book.

Have you ever seen a bad software demo ? Peter Cohan helps organizations put the Wow! into their demos to make them crisp, compelling and successful - to get the job done. He has had roles in four corners: technical, product and field marketing (he was banished to Basel, Switzerland for two years for bad behavior); sales and sales management; senior management (he built a business unit up from an empty spreadsheet into a $30M per year operation); and, in this last role, he has been that most important of all possible entities, a customer Peter Cohan leverages twenty-five years of experience in selling and marketing business software and as a customer. The Great Demo! method comes directly from extensive firsthand experiences in developing and delivering software demonstrations, and in coaching others to achieve surprisingly high success rates with their sales and marketing demos. For more information on demonstration methods, guidelines and tips, explore the author's website at www.SecondDerivative.com or contact the author directly at [email protected].

In Beyond the World's End T. J. Demos explores cultural practices that provide radical propositions for living in a world beset by environmental and political crises. Rethinking relationships between aesthetics and an expanded political ecology that foregrounds just futurity, Demos examines how contemporary artists are diversely addressing urgent themes, including John Akomfrah's cinematic entanglements of racial capitalism with current environmental threats, the visual politics of climate refugees in work by Forensic Architecture and Teddy Cruz and Fonna Forman, and moving images of Afrofuturist climate justice in projects by Arthur Jafa and Martine Syms. Demos considers video and mixed-media art that responds to resource extraction in works by Angela Melitopoulos, Allora & Calzadilla, and Ursula Biemann, as well as the multispecies ecologies of Terike Haapoja and Public Studio. Throughout Demos contends that contemporary intersections of aesthetics and politics, as exemplified in the Standing Rock #NoDAPL campaign and the Zad's autonomous zone in France, are creating the imaginaries that will be crucial to building a socially just and flourishing future.

As the waves of Occupy movements gradually recede, we soon forget the political hope and passions these events have offered. Instead, we are increasingly entrenched in the simplified dichotomies of Left and Right, us and them, hating others and victimizing oneself. Studying Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement, which might be the largest Occupy movement in recent years, The Appearing Demos urges us to re-commit to democracy at a time when democracy is failing on many fronts and in different parts of the world. The 79-day-long Hong Kong Umbrella Movement occupied major streets in the busiest parts of the city, creating tremendous inconvenience to this city famous for capitalist order and efficiency. It was also a peaceful collective effort of appearance, and it was as much a political event as a cultural one. The urge for expressing an independent cultural identity underlined both the Occupy movement and the remarkably rich cultural expressions it generated. While understanding the specificity of Hong Kong’s situations, The Appearing Demos also comments on some global predicaments we are facing in the midst of neoliberalism and populism. It directs our attention from state-based sovereignty to city-based democracy, and emphasizes the importance of participation and cohabitation. The book also examines how the ideas of Hannah Arendt are useful to those happenings much beyond the political circumstances that gave rise to her theorization. The book pays particular attention to the actual intersubjective experiences during the protest. These experiences are local, fragile, and sometimes inarticulable, therefore resisting rationality and debates, but they define the fullness of any individual, and they also make politics possible. Using the Umbrella Movement as an example, this book examines the “freed” political agents who constantly take others into consideration in order to guarantee the political realm as a place without coercion and discrimination. In doing so, Pang Laikwan demonstrates how politics means neither to rule nor to be ruled, and these movements should be defined by hope, not by goals.

This is a book for the age of resistance, for the occupiers of the squares, for the generation of Occupy Wall Street. The premier radical political philosopher of our time offers a devastating critique of the way neoliberalism has hollowed out democracy.

This is the story of how God transformed the life of Peter Demos from fear, anger, and emptiness into service to His kingdom. By allowing Christ to rule in his heart, Peter became a man who desires to make God the head of his home and his business. Before Peter surrendered his life to God, his marriage was a ticking time bomb, only salvageable by divine intervention. His business was his idol, and he felt immense pressure to run others over with it. Peter was a walking ball of fear, which manifested itself as uncontrolled anger. But Christ changed all that, granting Peter the peace he had not realized was possible. Dedicating his life and his business to God didn't take away all of Peter's problems. Keeping his new restaurant, Peter D's, running was incredibly challenging and the source of some of his biggest business failures. But God used those failures to draw Peter to Himself and make Peter more like Him. Learning to trust God to lead him through it all has turned those difficulties into growth and blessing in Peter's life. "Peter, with humility, gives clear practical examples of how he has brought his faith to his work, how to be bold in the little things, and how to trust God to overcome his fear. His transparency makes his story compelling and shows that a Christian life is not easy but is secure, knowing the love of God for those who believe." -Mark Whitacre, former FBI informant and current President of Operations at a biotechnology firm

NOTE - This book is intentionally brief (40 pages), aimed at a reader with minimal free time looking to immediately improve their demo.Why do so many demos of revolutionary, game-changing products end with confused investors, overwhelmed buyers, and lost dollars? People leading demos are being forced to fit an ever-expanding feature set into their audience's ever-shrinking attention span. Making matters worse, those leading the demos can rarely afford to spend months at a time figuring out how to improve their success rates. In Just F*Ing Demo!, Rob Falcone outlines the tactics that helped him overcome these challenges, lead clear, relevant demos, and exceed revenue generation goals quarter after quarter. The book will teach readers: - How to structure a demo; - How to ask questions that uncover what your audience truly cares about; - How to translate audience needs into a flow that is extremely easy to follow; - How to use simple but powerful interpersonal tactics within the demo itself. Just F*Ing Demo! distills Falcone's highly successful training program into an intentionally concise yet impactful read. From the entrepreneur seeking investment to the sales professional chasing a deal, anyone can carve out a few hours, read this book, and immediately make their demos kick ass.

To understand the movements of democratic society one must appreciate fictional narratives and not depend on rationalistic argumentation and scientific analyses. This volume examines the lessons and effects of storytelling in democratic culture and political life, as it articulates our aspirations, communicates our fears, and criticizes our reality.