As I've mentioned a couple of times, I'm automating the demo to test it for bad mojo. The automation is actually taking much longer than I thought: I spend most of my time trying to dig through the humongous automation object model to find the things I need to drive the UI. But when it works it's SWEEEEEEEEEEEET.

I'm about 60% done with the automation at this point, and to be honest even if I don't get it done it's already paid off. The first part of the demo is where all the tricky bits are that could be flakey. I've run those parts over 100 times so far just while testing the automation out.

Another neat thing I did was I pulled together enough automation to write a little app that gets Visual Studio ready for the demo. It launches VS, opens the right project, makes sure all the right windows are opened, and pre-loads a few dialogs to make sure they're in memory and zippy during the live presentation. I used it several times today and it's great!