How to Prepare Your Team

How do I prepare my team for the Symposium?

There are a couple questions you need to answer before you can properly prepare your team for the presentation.

  1. Who is coming to the Symposium? Is it appropriate to show all of the work we have completed or is some of it confidential? (please discuss this with your mentor)

  2. What are my expectations for student participation? All students must have some role in the Symposium.

After you answer these questions, you can start preparing your team. You will need to create and identify the following:

  • Content

  • Video Recording

  • Poster Preparation

    • Tips and Common Feedback

  • Speaking Roles

  • Timeline

Navigate to day of the symposium guidelines for additional expectations to review with your team.

Content

Where do I start? Throughout the semester you should be taking meeting and lab notes. These will be very helpful for putting together your final presentation. In addition to meeting minutes, your team could use any professional presentation content from Sprint Reviews to identify important content.

What should I include in my final deliverables? * Navigate to Spring 2024 Poster Guidelines for more details on the Poster. * Navigate to Spring 2024 Video Guidelines for more details on the Video.

Tips and Common Feedback

  • Have an elevator pitch for guests walking around. Practice this in lab with your team.

  • Make sure you meet the minimum requirements for content

  • Have minimal words on the poster. Use powerful visuals instead and verbally share accomplishments.

  • As one of the last steps, make sure the poster is uniform (same fonts and sizes, colors, styles).

View past presentations (from Spring Symposium) on The Data Mine Website to get ideas.

Speaking Roles

Now that your team has a presentation, you should communicate core ideas to your audience. One of the best ways to do this is to identify the number of sections and then assign speakers based on their understanding of the material. It is recommended to have a back-up speaker for each section.