You will be responsible for a presentation that demonstrates the technology you have chosen. The presentation should be no longer than 20 minutes. Being a few minutes short is okay; being long is not (as with any presentation, in Greg's opinion).

The presentation should give overview of the tool to a technical audience (the class). For example, since the audience is generally looking at the technology from the perspective of developers, it's reasonable to show code and technical features. Don't focus too much on your comparison here, since the presentations of the other groups will contrast other technologies.

Try to give the class good tools by which to evaluate your technology for use in a project (not necessarily the course project). You should tell us what sets this tool apart from others and give us an idea of when we would want to use it to solve a problem.

You should focus on questions like (but not limited to) these: Why is X useful? What kinds of problems does X solve well? What makes X cool? Does X have surprising features?

Note that explaining the highlights of a technology in a reasonable way in a short time like this is not easy. It requires a fairly deep understanding of the technology, and certainly more than reading the “about” page on their web site.

Video

This semester we are doing the presentations by video. Requirements:

• A 15–20 minute video presentation.
• Submit a URL to the video: maybe a YouTube link (unlisted is fine) or a file in Dropbox or similar.
• No student numbers or other personal info in the video. Include your names if you want, but it's not required.
• It is not required for you to have a webcam or show your face in the video.
• It is not required to have all group members appear in the video: if your group is happy with the distribution of work, then it's fine to have one or two group members take care of the presentation.
• Make sure your on-screen content is visible. In particular, make sure your font size (in your slides, web browser, editor, terminal, etc) is large enough to be readable on screen. (That might be 2x your normal editor/terminal font size.)
• Make sure your audio is understandable. When you are recording, make sure you speak clearly and generally a little louder than you usually would sitting in front of your computer.

The presentations will be edited together into a “lecture” and posted publicly.

Greg has posted some tips on producing the video.

Submitting

Submit a URL to the video to the Technology Evaluation Presentation activity in CourSys at least 48 hours before the presentation (i.e. by the Sunday evening the week of your presentation).