Assignment 4: Technology Presentation

DUE MONDAY MAR 11 AT 11:59PM.

Table of contents

• General Guidelines
  • Teams of 3
  • Teams of 4
  • Teams of 5
• Content of Presentation
• Logistics
• Submission and Grading

In this assignment, you will develop a presentation as a group to educate the class about a certain technology of interest that you have surveyed in Assignment 1.

General Guidelines

• Each speaker roughly gets about 7-8 mins.
• Time should be divided among team members as evenly as possible. Breaks among speakers should be at logical places, so some difference in timing (as low as 5-6 and as high as 10-11) is OK.
• Please keep the total number of slides to about 10-12 per speaker. That is roughly one per minute.
• Please email your slides to TA Catherine (catherinex@gatech.edu) by 2 p.m. on the day of the presentation with the subject of “CS 4440 Tech Presentation Slides” + your group number.

Teams of 3

You will present for a total of 25 minutes (one third of class) in a team of 3. Try to target for a 20min presentation and leave the last 5min for Q&A.

Teams of 4

You will present for a total of 35 minutes (half of class) in a team of 4. Try to target for a 28min presentation and leave at least 5min for Q&A.

Teams of 5

You will present for a total of 40 minutes (half of class) in a team of 5. Try to target for a 35min presentation and leave the last 5min for Q&A.

Content of Presentation

• A general description of the product area including the basic definitions of terms used in this technology; explain terms and concepts that are typically used in business literature etc. and are important in this technology.
• An overview of what this product family accomplishes and explain where it fits in the business context.
• Do not spend more than 7-8 minutes on the basic concepts and philosophy for the technology. Some comments on the historical development about how the technology evolved and where it is headed are welcome.
• Give a clear idea of what features are normally included and the typical functions that the systems or the tools provide.
• Show a chart showing leading products in that technology and the features pertaining to that technology (as Y/N matrix or details on how and to what extent each feature is supported). This is an important item - it indicates that you should find some comparative status of the existing products- should include more than just a couple of products.
• Give technical details of at least two systems/products/tools. Include architecture, typical working scenario, different modes of operation etc. Mention how databases are used or accessed by the system. If there are distinct approaches, you may describe multiple products in detail. Try not to cover more than two products in detail at any cost.
  • Here, for each chosen system/product/tool, we expect you to include its technical intricacies, features/functionalities, etc. For instance, you may choose ‘AWS’ under ‘Cloud Databases’ and focus on several technical aspects like its architecture, data security, etc.
• Describe one or two sample applications. Show a list of major companies involved (if that is applicable to your technology). Emphasize more on the technical structure and operation of the product and less detail on application or sales material from vendors.
  • Here, we expect you to identify the list of major companies (if applicable) which are actively using some system/product/tool (which you may have chosen for the above point).
  • You may present how a specific company uses some system/product/tool in this domain, the steps that they may have gone through, the benefits that the company accrued, etc. You are free to present this in the form of case study as well, for instance, how Netflix went about using AWS.
  • Thus, if you discuss product P by company X earlier, we want you to identify a major case study where some other company Y may have also used the product P effectively. Then you will give details about how Y went about using P to leverage its advantages.
• Marketing Data: if you can provide relative standing of products, positioning in the market, annual revenues for products, marketing strategy etc. This requires some effort on your part.
• Give your own prognosis and what you can gather from literature about how this product family/technology is evolving and what is likely to be happening in future
• Any relevant problems that researchers are working on related to this area (this may not apply to totally applied product families like CRM. But you can try to consult blogs that talk about which way this technology is headed, particularly in the context of applying ML and AI principles.).
• Give at least two or three ongoing research paper references at the end of the presentation and say briefly what these papers discuss and contribute.
• Do not present any single research paper in detail. Give an overview of what type of research is going on and where.

NOTE: Short demos are encouraged, but are not required due to time constraints and possible unavailability of software.

IMPORTANT: You are allowed to use material on the web: figures, charts etc. But please make sure to acknowledge everything that you have used with a URL at the bottom of the slide (where you use it). This is a strict guideline. You can use external information, but you must get into the practice of acknowledging the external source properly.

Logistics

1. Try to prepare draft slides early and send to the course staff for feedback (by Sunday noon for Monday talks and by Tuesday noon for Wednesday talks) with the title : “CS4440 Draft Slides”. If it is later the above guideline, we cannot guarantee feedback.
2. After your presentation, we may ask you to edit your presentation (e.g., acknowledgement of sources, adding some explanation etc.). We will upload the revised copy to the course website for sharing with the whole class.
3. Attendance roster will be kept for selected presentation days. If you cannot attend, send an email to TAs ahead of time.

Submission and Grading

Submit your technology presentation slide deck on canvas. Only one submission is required per group.

This assignment is worth 10% of your grade. The team is looked upon as one for the overall presentation and content. The team presentation will be graded based on the effort put in, the quality of the presentation, organization of material and delivery of the material.