CS B552 Knowledge-Based Computation

Miniconference Guidelines

Slides due on canvas by 11am on the day of your presentation, so they can be combined into a single file.

B552 concludes with a "minconference", in which students present their projects in short conference-format talks and answer questions. The goals are to share and discuss insights and to gain experience in presenting your work. Miniconference preparation will help organize ideas for your final paper, and miniconference questions will provide feedback that can help in developing your paper.

In conferences, presentation times are tightly constrained. Consequently, giving a good conference talk depends on distilling the key points into a concise presentation of the most important contributions--which is valuable skill for both academic and industry positions.

Because those who present later will have had more time to work on their projects, early presentations may be "work in progress" talks. These should include the key lessons so far and a sketch of what you expect to show and how you will demonstrate it.

All students will have the option to present late-breaking results and do live demos of systems during the course's final exam slot (10:15-12:15am, Monday, May 1). All students should attend this session, but presentation is optional.

Doing an effective short presentation is an art form. It requires getting to the “meat” as fast as possible. To make the presentations as informative as possible to the class, please consider points such as:

What is the research problem of your project? (Even though it's important to state the "big picture" problem, motivating the work with a concrete example can help.)
To what types of tasks (beyond your project task domain) might your approaches be able to contribute? What other AI work is most relevant?
What is the model or approach?
What are your claims? What is noteworthy about your approach, compared to other alternatives?
What lessons have you learned so far (e.g., strengths and limitations)?
What do you hope to learn by the end of the semester?
Has the project identified additional interesting problems to pursue in the future?

Timing

Single-person presentations should be 12 minutes long; 2-person presentations should be 18 minutes long; 3-person presentations should be 25 minutes long. Talks will be followed by time for questions/discussion.

There will be additional time for live demos and reporting late-breaking results in the final exam slot.

Group presentations should be divided approximately equally between the presenters.

When preparing for conference-length presentations, a good rule of thumb is not to have more than one slide per minute, and fewer slides may be more effective. To assure that all projects can be covered, it will be necessary to enforce time limits, so please be sure your material can be presented in the allotted time.

It may be necessary to stop talks which run over time. Please be sure to practice your talk with a timer so that you'll be able to cover everything and stop in time for questions!

Questions/Discussion Time

As at any conference, there will be a brief period for questions following each talk. The audience can use this to pursue aspects they find especially interesting, to clarify points, and to raise ideas or other points as helpful feedback for the presenters to use to improve their projects and writeups.

Please contact us for any questions, and I'm looking forward to your presentations!