Your semester project update presentations are designed to A) give the entire class a peak into what you’re up to and what methods and technologies you are working with, and B) give you a graded, deadlined waypoint to use as a guide for getting some serious work done.
They will be 10 minutes or so (no more than 15) and are worth 30 points.
Treat this as a dress rehearsal for the final presentation — you will be critiqued not only on the amount of work evidenced by your visuals and descriptions, but also your presentation abilities. (…but you don’t need to dress up)
Realize you’re speaking to a group that will know nothing about your project in advance.
Here are some ideas for things to include/address:
- introduce us to your project (title, research problem, justification for a solution, etc.)
- show/tell us about the current problem (remember that we are all from different domains and backgrounds — you’re speaking to a general [but scientifically-savvy] audience)
- show/tell us about your source data
- show/tell us about examples/models you’re building or improving upon
- show/tell us about your approach to the solution:
- your product is what? what does it do? who will use it?
- why did you choose x software or y language?
- why visualize it this way and not that?
- why is it important to build it this way vs. that (you’ve made decisions already, what were they? why did you choose one option over another?)
- show us a sketch of the entire project or workflow (data from here go here, i do this to them, my product is this and will go here in the end, etc.)
- show us your product/data/script as it stands now
- where will strangers be able to find your data or tool or script?
- where/how will it be found one year from now, 5 years from now?
- in your dreams, what might be built on top of your data/tool/product? who might use it to do what? how might it be expanded upon in the future (not necessarily by you)?
