Building a good demonstration is really about telling a story; in that sense, it is very similar to screenwriting, or any type of writing, for that matter.
"Stasis equals death" is a concept that found in a book about screenwriting (Save the Cat by Blake Snyder) that helps writers ensure they are telling an engaging story. The idea is that the current situation cannot be, something must be done to change it.
The video above is a dramatization of this concept. In this example, an asteroid is hurtling towards a city; obviously something has to be done. This context gives the storyteller an easy opportunity to introduce a hero to save the day.
When we build a demonstration, we are essentially trying to do the same thing. We are trying to set up a situation where it is clear that something has to be done. The more dramatic the situation, the more engaging our demonstration is (within reason of course).
Sometimes, when looking for those dramatic situations, we can use real-life events for inspiration. For example, in 2007, a truck ran off the road and knocked out one of Rackspace's data centers in Dallas, causing a rare disruption of service for Rackspace (thankfully nobody was physically hurt).
If we were building a demonstration for a data recovery or failover technology, a runaway truck is a great stasis situation. We would have to let our audience use their imagination to set the stage of course, but it would be immediately clear how important data recovery/failover is, and it gives us a clear opportunity to demonstrate how heroic our technology is.
Applied to demos, "stasis equals death" really boils down to imagining a scenario where your technology could be applied, and then asking yourself the question: "What happens if my technology is not applied"? When the answer to that question is something terrible—data is lost, a company goes out of business, a vast amount of money is lost—then you'll know you have found the right starting point for your demonstration.
At WonderAffect, we have found that applying this simple principle can really help make a demonstration much more engaging.
I talk about this concept further in Big Monsters and Small Houses.