Engineering Expo
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In this assignment you will register your project for the Engineering Expo, produce a poster to the College of Engineering template, and staff a booth for the whole event. It carries no points. It is a public event: your project partner or mentor, industry recruiters, other engineering majors, and high school students and their families all walk past your table, and it’s the last time most of them see your work.
The Expo is the College of Engineering showcase for every major’s capstone projects, held in spring week 10 and open to the public. Every team presents at a booth with a poster and, wherever the project allows it, the software running.
If you can pitch the capstone program to a visiting company at the same time, do it.
Registration
Section titled “Registration”Registration opens in early spring and the form is on the Expo website. Only one person, your team captain, registers the project. You will need:
- Team project name. Whatever you want on the Expo website and in the printed program. It doesn’t have to match the project name you’ve used all year.
- Capstone project ID. The ID your team carries in this course: “CS”, a period, and three digits, for example
CS.045. - Project description. A public, non-technical paragraph, which the Expo website publishes verbatim. An updated version of your fall project abstract is the usual starting point; strip the jargon before you paste it.
If you need monitors, power, or to be placed near another team, say so in the registration form rather than on the day.
The Poster
Section titled “The Poster”Every team produces a poster, and it must follow the College of Engineering template published on the Expo website. You get feedback on it before it’s final, in peer review and from your instructor.
Write it for a general audience. Visitors include recruiters who don’t know your stack and high school students who don’t yet have one, so avoid jargon, lead with the problem you solved, and carry the explanation in visuals rather than paragraphs. A QR code linking to your landing page or a live demo costs you nothing and gives an interested visitor somewhere to go afterwards.
Your instructor approves the poster before it goes to the printer, and the printing deadline is not the week of the event. Both dates are on the Expo website.
At the Booth
Section titled “At the Booth”At least one team member stays at the booth for the entire event, and more than one if you have hardware or a demo that needs watching.
Lead with the thing running. Have the demo up before the doors open and ready to restart, and show a visitor the one flow that matters before you explain anything; the Release trailer already made you choose that flow. Then explain, in a few sentences, what problem it solves and for whom, and answer questions. Keep a short spoken version ready for the visitor who won’t stop.
Take turns. Everyone on the team should get time to walk the floor, see the other projects, and talk to the companies who came to hire.
What You Submit
Section titled “What You Submit”One short confirmation: your registered team project name, your Capstone project ID, and the date your poster was approved and sent to print. Nobody grades the writing and there is no rubric.
Activities That Prepare This
Section titled “Activities That Prepare This”Learn from Jean-luc Doumont for the poster, because structuring one message for a non-expert audience is exactly what his handouts cover. Learn from TED Presentation Advice for the spoken version you give the visitor who won’t stop for the demo.
Browse Presenting when these run out.