Demo Presentation Guide

Your team has 10-12 minutes of presentation time, followed by 10-15 minutes of Q&A time with panelists. Each developer on the team should have about 2 minutes to talk.

Each person on your team should be prepared to answer questions. Decide ahead of time who will take what type of questions.

Past Presentation Day Recordings

• Team Seven Presentation Day (May 2021) (Passcode: *2AO%WaU)
• Team Six Presentation Day (March 2021) (Passcode: yNkCK5y$)
• Team Two Presentation Day (September 2020) (Passcode: V^9egNx4)
• Team One Presentation Day (August 2020) (Passcode: J3pFtd!3)

Tell the story of your app and your team

This is your public debut as a technologist. Show your confidence, enthusiasm, ability to learn a lot in a short time, and readiness to contribute as part of a professional development team.

Structure of Presentation

1. Describe your app and what it does, concisely, in one or two sentences. Example: “8-Track is an app that lets you build a to-do list for listening to your music.”
2. Why did you build this? What is the central problem you are solving or need your app addresses?
3. Each developer talks about some feature of the app that they worked on.
4. Conclusion – up to you how to conclude; see the topics list below for suggestions.

Screencast & App Description

Record a screencast that demos your app’s features. You and your team will talk while the screencast is playing. You can record a screencast easily in QuickTime (which should already be on your Mac). The video format should be .mov.

Write a short (1-2 sentences) description of your app. This will be used along with a video of your presentation on your website when we post it, and may be used when Momentum staff communicate verbally or in writing with employers or others outside our organization about what your team built.

Upload your final video and description (AND APP NAME!) to the Google Drive folder below by Thursday, August 26 at 2:00 pm.

• Google Drive folder

Topics to include in your presentation

You don’t have to mention all of the following, but consider touching on several of these points. Think about what you want to show off.

Remember, the focus should be on your skills and what you did.

• What part or parts of your app did you work on?
• Talk about relevant personal motivations to work on this project, or relevant prior experience.
• What specifically did you do and how did you do it?
  • How is your app structured?
  • What specific technologies did you use?
  • Did you learn something new for this project that would be interesting to mention?
• Was there a particular challenge you had to solve?
  • Describe what it was and what was tricky or interesting about it.
  • What did you do to you solve it?
• Was there a technical decision you made that you found interesting?
  • What were your considerations and tradeoffs, and why did you make the decision you did?
• Was there something in particular you learned during this project that you are excited about?
• Are there any features your app has that were technically challenging to implement that you can talk about?
• Suggested conclusion topics:
  • What you plan next for the app
  • What you’re excited about doing professionally in your developer job
  • Notable lessons learned
  • Thanks for audience’s time

Q&A Prep

You should be prepared to answer questions about the technical implementation of your application, about its use and the user needs it addresses, and about ways you might develop it in the future.

Examples questions being given to the panelists include:

• Can you tell me about why you decided to use <_insert technology_=""> to build this feature?
• What was one challenge or unexpected thing you encountered during your project, and how did you deal with it?
• What is your favorite thing about this application?
• Did you have to make any hard choices or compromises during development? How did you make that decision?
• What was something new you learned to do or got really good at doing during this project?
• If you were to keep working on this, what is the next feature you would add?
• What did your team do really well together?

How to Handle Q&A Live

Each person on your team will have an opportunity to speak during Q&A, so each person should prepare to make use of that opportunity.

You can agree on your team who will take each of the above questions, or categories of questions, if they are asked.

Another way to do this is to take turns with whatever is asked. Plan who will take the first audience question, then the second, then the third.

If it’s your turn and the question is obviously one that is better answered by someone else on the team (because they worked on that feature, for example), you can give a short or partial answer, and then gracefully hand it over to your teammate.

If you are a member of a group that is well represented in the tech industry, you can help to amplify voices that are not usually heard. Please consider handing over speaking time to a teammate if they have not had as much time to speak about technical topics.

How to handle a question you don’t know the answer to

This is the same advice we have for technical interviews.

• Pivot to a topic you are prepared to talk about!
  • Try to make the transition as relevant as you can. You can say “I don’t know” if you feel comfortable doing that, but DON’T STOP THERE! Take the opportunity to talk about something you do know.
  • Do not feel compelled to confess that you don’t know something and DO NOT APOLOGIZE.
  • All you have to do is express interest in the question, which shows you are a curious and undaunted continual learner, and keep the conversation going!
• Example: “Oh, that’s an interesting question. The way we thought about [that broad issue] in our app is…[insert something you are prepared to talk about].”