[alexpetralia]

One thing that's always helped me in interviews is to bring these side projects - physically - into the interview. Often it's customary to not bring anything but your resume. I typically bring a print-out of my projects, some GitHub code, some documentation samples, and maybe even my laptop with projects pre-opened so that we have things to talk about.

I always qualify this as "just in case you are interested", but they are almost always interested. Nobody wants to talk about a bland resume; they'd rather talk about the things you found a genuine interest in.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

I've had co-workers remember, years after interviewing me, that I brought in some little piece of hardware I built to the interview.

I've showed off circuit boards, half-baked Android apps and referenced webpages during interviews. It always helps.

A couple years ago at an interview debrief, the HR guy said, "Oh, the candidate told me that he was writing some kind of software to automate his home. Who would do that? Weird." And every developer in the room looking at each other and saying "and you didn't think to tell us that?"

[vsareto]

I've done this before (just the laptop and an HDMI cable) and also had success with it.

It sort of wakes people up out of a traditional interview expectation and instead they now have to actually listen to what I'm saying rather than going through canned questions and answers.