A Designer's Experience - Taking the thumbrule for granted

“Hey…so what about the artworks?”
“Naah…don’t think we need them…!”
“But…the client would not get a feel of what we are presenting buddy…let’s carry the laptop at least…!”
“Give me a break dude…carting the laptop can be quite a pain in the butt…!”

Well…Ben appeared unperturbed by everything that I said. He had a serenity about him which made him feel more than confident of making the winning move at the presentation.

However, as we walked into the intimidating conference room (soon Ben and I would be in the limelight), my hands were clammy and I could feel my throat go dry. The concepts we had created for this million-dollar client no longer seemed to inspire confidence.

The lights were switched on. And there walked in the client’s team – geared with gadgets that made us feel like ancient warriors from the Gothic era. With a flick of a button the projector was switched on, lights dimmed and a snazzy Flash presentation followed, giving us a corporate spiel that compounded my feeling of uneasiness. It all appeared gibberish thanks to my feeling of being unprepared and Ben’s supreme confidence. As the CEO trailed away into details, it reached a point where the spotlight was on us.

I stood up clumsily and walked to the front. The pregnant silence seemed to be forever. My mouth was parched and as I presented the numbers and our company profile, there already seemed to be yawns and disinterest floating in the room. This only added to the woes where the potential of winning this account slowly seemed to vanish. I passed the baton on to Ben to make his move.

With added panache, he moved up, dug his hands into his pocket and pulled out a flash drive. He plugged it into the spare laptop on the conference room table and in less than 30 seconds the room came back to life. I could see my award-winning campaign blasted on screen. The presentation was a cakewalk and the client’s face lit a 1000 watts. We clinched the deal and now we were ready to rock the nation with our campaign for our client.

On our way back, behaving coy, I had to find out what was it that Ben carried with him that helped steal the show. With the profundity of an expert, Ben told me that it was a simple portable app that can be carried around on any portable device to be used on any computer anywhere. So all you need to do is plug it in, and there is immediate access to your software and data just as you would on your own PC.

“But hang on…I thought you made the presentation on PhotoShop…don’t tell me you have Adobe PhotoShop stored on it as well…?”
A broad grin was all Ben would give by way of a reply.
“But what about the changes you were carrying out?”
“Well…I am through with them…and I am carrying them with me…!”

I was dumbfounded…and had to get back…!
“But I think you would have left traces of the campaign back on the laptop.”
With a smirk on his face, Ben replied… “When you unplug, there’s nothing left behind…!”

Turning away and feeling defeated, yet with a happiness of winning an account…I could not help but ask… “Which brand is this?”
Ben with a broad assuring smile mentioned… “There are plenty of these in the market, personally I prefer i-flapp”

The next thing I knew I had to have it on my list of gizmos. After all, I can use it for a whole lot of applications. That’s like having the world in my pocket.