Demo Day

Submission: Team, proof of registration
Due: Register by the end of fall week 3; sessions in fall weeks 5 and 10, winter weeks 5 and 10, and spring week 5
Weight: No points; it does not change your grade

Five sessions run across the year and your team presents at exactly one.

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

This is not the sprint demo you give your Teaching Assistant (TA) every two weeks. That one is your own team in your own check-in, 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 one of the five sessions by the end of fall week 3. Check announcements for the registration link, the lineup, and how long each team has.

Take the earliest slot your team can live with. A demo in front of the whole class finds the thing your team stopped noticing about its own product, and an early one leaves you the rest of the year to act on what it finds. The late sessions fill first for the opposite reason, so a team that wants one should claim it early.

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 gate 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. The presentations guide covers the format, and it’s 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. There is no rubric and no points.

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 communication when these run out.