Demo Day

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Submission: Team, proof of registration
Due: Register by Sunday of fall week 3; sessions in fall weeks 5 and 10, winter weeks 5 and 10, and spring week 5
Weight: 1% extra credit in the term your team presents

Five sessions are scheduled across the year, and your team presents at exactly one.

Up to five times across the year, the class meets as a whole and a lineup of teams demos working software. Every team demos once per year, so the five sessions cover the class between them and you take one of them.

This is not your sprint check-in with your TA every two weeks. That one is your own team, with every student showing the part they owned. Demo day is the whole class in one room, one team at the front, and one demo for the team.

Registering for a Session

Your team registers for a slot in one of the five sessions by Sunday of fall week 3. There are enough slots for every team, but each session has a fixed number, so a session can fill before the deadline. A session no team registers for does not run. Check announcements for the registration link and for the lineup, which shows the sessions that run.

Each team has five minutes at the front, and the five minutes include setup. Questions come only if you finish early, so plan a demo that fills the five minutes without them.

Pick whichever session suits your team. Treat it as practice at public speaking: you explain your own work to a room that has never seen it, in five minutes.

What to Show

Working software, live, not slides about working software (fall week 5 is the exception, below).

Open with what it is and who it’s for, in two sentences. Most of the room has never heard of your project.
Demo the path a real user takes, end to end, on the running product. A recorded fallback is fine when your demo depends on hardware or a network you don’t control; say so when you start.
Say what isn’t built yet, briefly. Every other team in the room is mid-project too.
Close with what you want, if you want anything: testers, a library recommendation, someone who has already solved the integration you’re stuck on.

If Your Session Is Fall Week 5

In fall week 5 your first sprint has just ended, and you may have little that runs yet. Show what exists rather than stretching it, and let the room see where the project is going:

Open with the problem and who has it, in two sentences, and how your partner or their users deal with it today.
Show whatever runs: a spike, a notebook with real output, a clickable prototype, or the first slice of your walking skeleton. A mockup is fine if you say it’s a mockup.
Say what “hello, production” will mean for your project by week 10, from what your team records for the fall week 10 milestone at the week 5 checkpoint.
Close with what you want, as in any other session.

Rehearse once, out loud, on the machine you will present from, and time it from plugging in to your last sentence: all of it has to fit in the five minutes. The presentations guide covers delivering a demo, the same skill the Engineering Expo asks for in spring.

What You Submit

Proof that your team registered: a screenshot of the registration confirmation showing your team and the session you took. One submission per team. Registering carries no points; presenting earns every student on the team 1% extra credit in the term you present, added on top of the four components.

Activities That Prepare This

Learn from TED Presentation Advice for the opening two sentences, which are the hardest part of a short demo to a room that doesn’t know your project. Learn from Patrick Winston for how to structure the middle.

Browse Presenting when these run out.