Feedback on how to improve demo experience

[tayloramurphy]

Douwe shared some feedback given from Sid:

• [ ] "copy and paste doesn't work" - seems like it might not be as easy as we think to copy and past the config. worth testing. last week I tried to make the readme have those little copy to clipboard buttons but I don't know if that's possible in markdown or codespace. perhaps we need another solution here.
• [ ] "had to cd into the directory" - he had to cd into the directory to get it to work. not sure if that's accurate but worth checking
• [ ] "first the WOW then the how" - I really like this feedback. @sbalnojan what do you think of updating the container so that the first thing a user runs is meltano run and then we can break down what's happening and / or have them do their own project?
• [ ] "paste this below pip_url can be more explicit" - I think I wrote this - the language isn't super clear on where to actually cut and paste.

FYI @DouweM based on the feedback you shared with me.

[sbalnojan]

Thanks @tayloramurphy.

• FWIW, the copy and pasting seems to work as is. It may happen that the browser asks for permissions (and some randomly block it): https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/remote/codespaces. Maybe we can add another note :-D (since it's a browser thing again)
• I just tried it and it seems to be working without an CD'ing.
• Sounds interesting, I'll see what I can come up with. (I think we need a good WOW to make this work, so let's see what I can find.)

[tayloramurphy]

@sbalnojan thinking on the "wow" factor a bit more - I wonder if there's some simple CLI visualization tool that we can use along with DuckDB to create a simple chart that outputs to the command line.

I'm thinking we can have the user run 2 commands - a full meltano run that does the extract load and transformation. And then a python script (also via meltano run) that queries duckdb and outputs a chart based on that data to the command line. (maybe with a tool like this https://github.com/mkaz/termgraph ? that's a random repo I found).

I'm worried that just having them run an end to end meltano run isn't a full enough wow, but that if we can show a cool image in the terminal and then walk them through the pipeline that would be a good how.

[sbalnojan]

@tayloramurphy, I'm all for presenting it in a shiny light, but I also think we've should stick to the E&L focus. Completely. That what has to wow, no fancy graphic on top of it.

My suggestion: let me prepare something first, then we can all play it and see how it feels, and how we could enhance the "wow".

My preliminary idea: Wow on the E&L parts that we already have, just shine a light on them. Enhance the script I currently have to display the results from the database to:

1. output the results from the database
2. list the newly created resources (because Meltano is awesome and auto creates schemas & tables!)
3. list all the columns (because Meltano is awesome and auto creates a bunch of useful metadata columns)

[DouweM]

I just tried it and it seems to be working without an CD'ing.

@sbalnojan You're totally right, no need to cd into anything, but then the meltano init output is incorrect as it says "Next steps: cd new_project"

[tayloramurphy]

@sbalnojan yeah - I'm sold there - keep it focused on EL. I do wonder then if it'd be worth having something like:

meltano run <tap> <map> <target> <python script> where the Python script is doing exactly what you say: output results, new tables, columns etc.

[sbalnojan]

@DouweM good point, maybe I can make the output I have in there anyways bigger and fatter :-D (Like don't cd,go straight to step 2, we already got your covered).

@tayloramurphy, I think that would again distract. the magic is in "meltano run tap map target". That's it.

I think it's fine to have a second step to make it visible. With a line like: "Wait we're already done? That's it??? Yes! The beauty of meltano is that it is soooo simple that you need a second step to make it visible".

[tayloramurphy]

@sbalnojan I trust your judgement on this! I think I'm just trying to avoid having the magic be in reading a bunch of log lines.