Project Presentations for Cloud Computing

Project Presentations

In the final two weeks of class, you will give an oral presentation on your final project. The project need not be totally complete, but you should be able to show substantial progress, giving evidence that the main functionality of your project is working, and you are close to done.

Each talk will occupy TEN minutes, followed by TWO minutes for a brief question and transition to the next speaker. The time limits will be strictly enforced, so as to ensure every group has the full time allotment. Given that, you must stick carefully to your message, and practice your talk multiple times in order to get the timing and content just right.

Keep in mind that you have been thinking about your project for a while, but your audience has not. Make sure that you clearly state the problem that you are solving, give the general idea of the solution, explain the parts of the system you have built, describe how you are evaluating it, and what your results are so far. Include some example or screenshots so that we can clearly see how it works in practice.

Your talk should be accompanied by about 6-10 carefully prepared slides. You may use any tool that you like to create slides, but you must email them to me as either a PDF file or a Google Docs Link by 8:00 AM the day of your presentation so I can get everything set up on the class computer. (There won't be time for each presenter to muck around by logging in and out, downloading files, and so forth.)

Use your slides to back up what you say to the audience. Don't just write out the words that you plan to say; that gets old quickly. Instead, give a diagram of the components of your system and describe how they interact. Or, give a screenshot of your system in action and explain what it is doing. Or, give a code snippet on the screen and explain what is interesting about it.

Finally, be considerate of your classmates -- be present at all of the class sessions and ask thoughtful questions about the many interesting projects. Attendance at the project presentations will be taken, and will factor into your project grade.

Examples

Here are some good slide decks from previous class years:
  • TunesHeap
  • CouchDB Performance Evaluation
  • Comparison of Makeflow and SWF
  • Hashtag Lifecycle
  • Grading

    Your grade will be based on the following rubric:
  • Does the presentation adequately cover all aspects of the project: the objective or problem to be solved, the structure and technologies used, one or more interesting challenges, and the performance evaluation?
  • Has substantial progress on the project been made? Is the main functionality working correctly?
  • Are the slides prepared with care, including excellent diagrams that show the structure of the system and how the components interact?
  • Is the oral presentation loud and clear, with each group member participating, and completing the presentation within the time limit?
  • Did the project members attend everyone else's talks and ask appropriate questions?
  • Schedule

    The schedule of talks will be established the week prior to the first talks. Please plan your work under the assumption that you will be the first group to present.