Demo Dundies Season 2

Renee (Storylane): Hi, everyone. Renee here, reporting from Storylane. We are so excited to have you here with us for our second annual Demo Dundies. Today, we're here to celebrate some of the best demos out there. Hope everyone is ready to be Dundied. And a quick shout-out to our sponsors, especially Serenity by Jan — you can find us online and at your local farmers market, especially the beet stand. Let's get into it.

Jackson Eldridge (Co-host): Fact: the Demo Dundies is the most precisely orchestrated event in the history of SaaS. I have prepared 47 contingency plans, all color-coded and laminated.

Luka (Host): Jackson's been preparing for this moment since, well, probably last year's Demo Dundies. Alright, guys, wrap it up — it's showtime.

Jackson: Welcome to Demo Dundies season two. I'm Jackson Eldridge, the assistant regional host.

Luka: I'm Luka. I'm your host, too. Get it?

Anael (Host): Hi, everyone. I'm Anael. Think of me as your emotional support for the next thirty minutes.

Luka: For those of you new here, what is Demo Dundies? It's an award show hosted by Storylane to recognize the best interactive demos in the world. And if you're wondering what exactly Storylane is — it's a platform that helps you build self-guided demos, sandbox demos, and hubs without writing any code. You just capture screens, edit them in minutes, and use that demo anywhere: your website, email campaigns, sales follow-ups, you name it. The Demo Dundies is divided into six categories. Our panel of expert judges reviewed every submission to pick the finalists, and then the public voted to decide who takes home the crown. Last year, we sent someone to Paris. This year, we are sending one lucky winner to Italy. The bar is higher. And if you're not already demoing like it's pretzel day, what are you even doing? But first, entertainment that we didn't ask for — please welcome Matt Roodero, AKA Prison Mike, as our in-house talent.

Prison Mike (Matt Roodero): You know, I've been to prison twice. The second time, they sent me to Alcatraz. Now listen closely, because this is counting as your lunch break. The longer I spent in that prison, the happier I got. My perspective changed. I stopped viewing it as a prison and realized it's also an island.

Don't date your home page demo — may as well have sent those leads to jail. Your prospects don't want pictures, not another video or boring infographic. Your competition? They won't see a single feature they can't steal. The people who will pay you money want to try something they can't feel. So break your buyers out of Prospect Prison. Make up for the meetings that you've been missing. You will be fine, because you'll be doing deals without doing the time.

Luka: Well, that was more enjoyable than I thought it'd be. Moving on — it's time to meet our elite panel of demo connoisseurs who vetted and judged the insane amount of demo nominations that came in. Please welcome:

Pam Dunn, head of solutions at Lorica Cybersecurity — brings decades of trust-building experience and is a seasoned presales leader and advisor with a focus on emotional intelligence and sales enablement.

James Kaikis, ex–chief revenue officer at TestBox, also co-founder of PreSales Collective — he basically lives and breathes the word "enablement."

Tess Bober, founder of ScrollLab — she's revamped more landing pages than you've had meetings about CTA button colors.

Jeremy Goldstein, senior PMM at SentinelOne — cybersecurity genius, marketing brain, and a demo nerd who enjoys breaking down technical stuff into narrative-driven product experiences.

Sophie Martineau, senior PMM at Channable — Demo Dundies season one winner turned judge.

Madhav Bhandari, Head of Marketing at Storylane — he has sat through multiple interactive demos, good and bad, so he can take in patterns and break them for fun.

Pat Santora, senior solutions architect at AWS — he brings twenty-five-plus years of product experience and has led cloud product launches, analytics overhauls, and more. Pat knows exactly what makes a demo technically sound and strategically sharp.

Every category had dozens of serious contenders, and trust us, choosing the finalists was harder than explaining what Creed actually does at Dunder Mifflin. Huge thank you to our panelists, who consumed hours of demo content, filled out way too many scoring sheets, and somehow didn't rage-quit halfway through. Shout out to you.

Next, let's get to our first category. Beauty is rare, but every now and then a pretty demo worthy of being part of the Finer Things Club pops up. Our first category is Best Design. The winner was picked based on the overall aesthetics of their demos, ease of following steps — clarity, intuitiveness, and focus — visual storytelling, and use of multimedia. The nominations for Best Design are Talroo, Zappy, Tracktable, LodgeLink, and CodeSignal. And the winner is — Tracktable. Congrats to Tracktable. Tracktable's demo stood out for its seamless design that worked beautifully across both mobile and desktop. The strong AI-generated opening screen instantly grabbed attention and set the tone for the entire experience.

Anael: Now I'd like to invite Mitchell on stage to say a few words — if Mitchell was here. Hey, Mitchell, how are you? Congrats.

Mitchell (Tracktable): Thank you so much. Yeah, pretty cool to see. Shout out to Dorelena and the team — really cool product. We've been able to put it on our website, we've got a ton of people looking at it, using it as a qualification tool, and even sending it out to folks offline via email. So it's been awesome for our team — it saves us this amount of time. I candidly designed it, so it took a bit of time there, but it was worth it. It was exciting.

Anael: Well, congrats again.

Mitchell: Thank you.

Jackson: It's time. Alright, everyone, there's a fire. What's the correct procedure? Come on — another fire drill.

Luka: Jeez, Jackson, not tonight. Pretending nothing just happened — let's move on to our next award category. Some demos make you yawn, and some stop you in your tracks, like Dwight's fire drill or Kevin's chili. Unexpected? Yes. Effective? Absolutely. Covered in beans? Metaphorically. Our next category is Best Pattern Interrupts. The winner was picked based on creativity, originality, strategic placement of elements without breaking the flow, relevance, attention recapture, and multimedia usage. The nominations for Best Pattern Interrupts are respond.io, Auvik, NICE, Cactus Communications, and Yasun. And the winner is — Auvik. Congrats to Auvik. Auvik's demo stood out for turning a Pirates of the Caribbean–themed journey — yes, you heard that correctly — into an engaging experience that cleverly masked PII, featured their mascot, and immediately hooked viewers with a reward right from the welcome screen, which we absolutely love. The interactive, quiz-style pattern interrupt in step 10 sealed the deal, making the demo both fun and memorable.

Anael: Let's invite Emily to the stage. Hey, how are you, Emily? Congrats.

Emily (Auvik): Hi, thank you. We had an amazing opportunity to do something fun. When we first met Matt, we said, "Okay, we want to do something out of the box — can you help us?" And he was super quick, so we got to do something fun for our first Storylane ever, which was cool.

Anael: Awesome. Well, congrats again. Thank you so much for joining.

Luka: If your demo made us ask, "Why didn't I think of that?" — well, the Most Innovative Use Case category is for you. To the entries that included pictures of laptops in jelly puddings: you did not qualify. Also, what were you thinking? The winner was picked based on industry applicability, originality, problem-solution fit, and narrative coherence. The nominations for Most Innovative Use Case are Mopinion, GoOne, Auvik, Rocketlane, and CodeWalnut. And the winner is — GoOne. Amazing job, GoOne. This winning demo shined as a first-of-its-kind interactive QA editor agent, bringing a fresh take on how teams can test and refine their demos. It's functional, and it was genuinely really cool to see in action.

Anael: Hey, Ali, how are you? Let's hear it from Ali now.

Ali (GoOne): Yeah, thanks. That was so much fun to make.

Anael: Amazing. So glad to have you here with us. What was the most fun thing about the demo, design-wise — maybe something that took you out of your day-to-day a little while creating the Storylane?

Ali: My favorite thing, actually — I made a little icon, an emoji, and I made it with a pink hat. I don't know if you can see it, but it's a Storylane color.

Anael: No, I can see it. It looks great.

Ali: Yeah, I got to make that with Hatch, which was fun.

Anael: Adorable. We love the design aspect. Well, congrats again, and thank you for joining us.

Ali: Yeah, thanks so much.

Anael: Of course. Alright, everyone, before we dive into the next categories, we're going to test your Office IQ with a quick game of trivia. I hope everyone partook in their Office trivia happy hours — I know I've been to some. So drop the answers in the chat. We have five quick questions. Let's test that knowledge.

Question one: What does Dwight keep in his car for special occasions? Toby — potatoes, that's a great guess. A gun, interesting. Gas, knives, cake, dress shoes, sandals — amazing answers. Well, if you said pepper spray, you're not wrong, but the correct answer is a set of nunchucks, because, obviously. Why wouldn't I have that?

Question two: What is Michael Scott's action-hero alter ego in his self-produced film? This is either your favorite or least favorite episode. I've got David Brent, Tom Cruise — this one might be a little too easy — Borat. Great answers. The answer is Michael Scarn: FBI agent, Threat Level Midnight, and zero acting experience.

Question three: What is the name of Angela's favorite cat that Dwight freezes? Got some sprinkles in the chat, got a Mister, got a Kevin — he's hungry. All great answers. The answer is Sprinkles. RIP — our condolences.

Question four: Who won the "Hottest in the Office" Dundee? Bonus points if you put who you wanted to win, too. Got Jim, got Darryl, got Ryan, got "myself" — not me, as in Anael — got the printer. Maybe the fax machine. Not the chili, Kevin, unfortunately. Not Sprinkles either — we know Sprinkles is no longer. The answer is Ryan, to his very deepest regret and to Michael's eternal delight.

Final question: What is Creed's job title? It's a hard one — I'm not sure Creed knows either. Chief creepy officer, warehouse manager — I'm not sure Darryl would love that answer. Thank you, Moez. The correct answer is quality assurance. Realistically, I'm not sure anyone knows — again, not even Creed himself. Well, thank you all so much for playing. Let's hop into the next three winners, until we crown the overall trip to Italy.

Jackson: This award celebrates the ultimate lineup of tailored and tidy demos that are more impressive than Michael's trophy cabinet — but not quite as impressive as my weapons collection. The nominations for Best Demo Collection are Collibra, CodeWalnut, GoodWings, Ignition, and Talroo. And the winner is — Collibra. Congrats to Collibra, round of applause. This demo created a personalized experience right from the start, with a lead-gen form and a warm welcome — first-name token touch, we love a good token. It also delivered a well-structured collection, neatly organized by products and use cases, making it easy to explore and navigate.

Anael: Let's bring up Mark. Hey, how are you doing? Congrats.

Mark (Collibra): Thank you. It's been a shock, a surprise — thanks so much. I didn't think we would win, but it's been a big effort from the team. We spent a lot of time coming up with all these demos and putting them together in a nice experience that's easy to consume and navigate. And we love the partnership we have with Storylane — it's been a pleasure working with you, and we hope we can continue this partnership for a long time.

Anael: Thank you so much for all the kind words, and congrats. You'll have to figure out who to take as your plus-one to Italy, if the whole team worked on it — so you have some things to do. But the hard work definitely paid off. Congrats again.

Mark: Awesome. Thank you.

Luka: This next one celebrates those demos that pull you in faster than standing in line on pretzel day. Next up, the award for Best Welcome Screen. The judging criteria are hook effectiveness, value proposition, visual appeal, surprise elements, and personalization. The nominations for Best Welcome Screen are Ignition, Cascade, respond.io, MessageGears, and MNTN. And the winner is — Cascade. Congratulations to Cascade. Cascade's rep is actually not here today, but what we love about this demo is how it starts with a quick presenter video to set context for users new to interactive demos, and then gives them the choice between a guided walkthrough or a full sandbox experience. Using a hypothetical example — Meerkat Cycling — it showcases the flow with clear CTAs in every single step. Big congrats to Cascade again. Their rep isn't here to say a few words, but round of applause to Cascade, and we'll keep moving.

Jackson: These shouldn't be feature dumps. We looked at these demos and thought: you're in this category if your demo was interesting and well-curated, with zero unnecessary explosion — sorry, Golden Face. The last category is Best Storytelling. The judging criteria are clarity, energy, hook, compelling narrative, problem-solution, and, as a bonus, humor. The nominations for Best Storytelling are Rocketlane, Cactus Communications, Adthena, Email Vault, and MNTN. And the winner is — Email Vault. Congratulations to Email Vault. This demo stood out because it took a common problem and flipped it into a clear, reliable solution, with a hypothetical example. The story was crisp and creative, and the CTA buttons felt like they were part of the narrative itself.

Anael: Please give a warm welcome to Elizabeth to say a few words. Hi, Elizabeth, how are you?

Elizabeth (Email Vault): Hi. Good, how are you? I was very surprised and excited.

Anael: Amazing. How was making the story experience? What surprised you when you were creating it?

Elizabeth: It was fun. It was a really interesting way to look at our app — because of that category, it just helped us look at it from a different perspective, which we really appreciated. We've used Storylane for a bunch of different demos, but never thought to use it that way. So I love this, and we love the software — we use it all the time.

Anael: Best use cases are the unexpected ones.

Elizabeth: Yes, I agree.

Anael: Well, congrats, and thank you so much again.

Elizabeth: Thank you.

Jackson: Look, I don't do a lot, but if there's a free trip to Italy on the line, I'm clocked in. One lucky winner will trade demo fatigue for vineyard views — an actual trip to Italy, on us. Now let's spin the damn wheel.

Anael: Okay, everyone, it's the moment we've all been waiting for. Let's spin the wheel to see who wins the trip to Italy. And don't forget, you do get a plus-one, so things to take into account. Let's spin that wheel — you can pretend there's some music playing. Wow, a photo finish, if I had to say. Well, congrats to GoOne. Ali, if you're still here, we can take a few words — if you wouldn't mind popping back on. Congrats on the trip to Italy. I must say, I'm very, very jealous.

Ali (GoOne): Hey. Can't wait to eat pizza in Italy. Congrats — I'm in disbelief.

Anael: Without giving it away — any idea who you're going to be taking with you?

Ali: My roommate, who I made review my demo, like, a hundred times.

Anael: Oh, goodness. We love that. Okay, thank you so much.

Ali: Of course, thanks again.

Ali: Did you announce who got the most votes?

Anael: We did not announce who got the most votes — maybe that means we'd be able to follow up. This was a spin on the spinner wheel itself.

Ali: For each category, do you mean? It just said you could go vote, and I voted for a bunch of different categories of people.

Anael: Yeah, so these were the top winners of each of those categories, and then they got entered into the big win, which she won. So we could definitely share. Look at Toby — amazing, Toby, thank you so much. We will share those votes.

Ali: Okay, awesome.

Anael: Well, congrats again. Again, very, very jealous.

Ali: Thanks so much. Love Storylane so much. Thank you.

Anael: Amazing. Thanks, Ali. And congrats to all of the category winners. May your wine be bottomless and your demos bug-free. Thanks for helping the interactive demo space get the spotlight — it's been quietly crushing it. Oh my god, this was the best Demo Dundies ever. We'll see you in season three.

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