In my Stasis == Death article, I talked about how I like to use Blake Snyder's principle to help find a compelling problem scenario.

Once we have a problem scenario, it is vital to put that problem in the right context. This is where I like to borrow another one of Blake's screenwriting principles: the Monster in the House. This is a very simple principle; you need one of the following:

• A big monster
• A small house

One of those has to be true for a compelling screenplay, or in our case, a compelling demonstration. In our case, the monster is the problem, and the context is the house.

Big problems/monsters like semi-trucks heading for datacenters are great for demos because they are immediately recognizable as huge problems. The 'house' in this case is pretty big too - if a semi-truck is about take out your datacenter, then your entire business, all of your assets and all of your customers are going to be affected. In this case, we have a big monster and a big house - we're OK because one aspect of our principle is true.

Not all of my clients run datacenters (few do actually), so this type of scenario is not always practical. So we have to find other problems. In most cases, these turn out to be small problems or smaller monsters. If we have a small problem—like a email that is too slow or an analysis report that is not quite right—lwe just have to shrink our context/house. A small monster in a small house is still a big monster.

Instead of using the whole company as the context/house, we might have to use just a division in the company, or just a team, or even an individual. In an extreme case, we can focus on an individual's day, or a period during that day, or even a single task. When we focus at that level, even a small monster/problem can be very big.

When I'm trying to think up how to demonstrate a product, a technology, or a service, I like to first apply Stasis == Death to find a situation that needs to change. Once I have that, I like to identify whether I have a big monster. If I don't, I just need to shrink the house. I've found that this tends to increase the drama of a given demonstration and make it more compelling to the audience.