DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE

University of Toronto

CSC454/2527S: The Business of Software

January-April 2003

Assignment E: Oral Presentation on Business Issue

Posted: 16 February 2003, 6 p.m.

Due In: 3 March 2003, 7:50 p.m.

Marks: 7%

 

Individuals will make brief oral presentations (max. 2.5 minutes each) discussing a key issue or challenge in their team’s evolving business plan. Each team will designate 2 members who will make the final presentation on April 7th; all others (that means 3, 4, or 5 people, for groups of size 5, 6, and 7, respectively) will make oral presentations on March 3rd. If you fail to make a presentation on one of these two nights, you will be given a grade of 0 for this assignment. Note that only two individuals per group will be allowed to present on April 7th.

In order to ensure enough time for all presenters and questions, presentations in your respective tutorials will begin at 7:50pm on March 3rd after the screening of the film “Startup.com”. Worse yet (!), the screening of “Startup.com” will commence at 6pm sharp to ensure that there’s enough time to watch the whole presentation (apologies to those of you who’ll have to rush between classes on March 3rd). It’s a fun and educational film, and worth the effort to get to class a little early …

Each presentation will be in two parts:

·        A brief "elevator pitch" describing your business in no more than 30 seconds. Typically this will consist of 2-4 sentences. Imagine you have just entered an elevator with a venture capitalist and she asks you to tell her the key idea of your business, focusing on the problem you are solving and the uniqueness and value proposition of your solution. If you succeed in conveying a compelling concept before the elevator reaches its destination, she may look at your plan. If you do not, she will not. (If you really blow it, she may also pull a lever to open a trap door in your corner of the elevator floor, causing you to plummet down the elevator shaft :-)

·        A presentation (max. 2 minutes) of one issue or challenge you are facing in developing your plan, and a discussion of key questions surrounding this issue. You must coordinate with those members of your team who will be making a presentation on March 3rd so that each of you covers a unique topic.

Once all the members of your group have finished with presentations, the class will have max 4 minutes to interact with members of your group by posing comments/questions in response to your presentations (each of you will be responsible for answering/commenting on questions/comments pertaining to your topic).

 

Presentations must be created and presented by you individually. Yes, this means that there will be multiple individual presentations of individually-created elevator pitches for each team. This is what we want! Feel free to use the blackboard or overhead transparencies in your March 3rd presentations.

 


Grading Scheme (7%)

2%      Elevator speech (clarity, coherence, compelling-ness of wording & presentation, focus/simplicity)

5%      Issue Presentation, allocated as follows:

2%      Form: clarity, structure.

3%      Method & Content: narrative flow, analytical coherence, transparency of your degree of certainty/uncertainty about your key points, demonstrated analytical effort, consideration of relevant alternatives, attentiveness to the audience during your responses to questions; brevity/focus/clarity of your responses to questions.

           

 

Note on Assignment G

The two individuals from each team who do not make presentations on March 3rd are to collaborate on a final oral presentation (5 minutes total per team) presenting the most salient aspects of your business plan. These presentations will be given on April 7th, half in front of the whole class (in Hour #1) and the remainder in Hour #2 in front of an informal panel of technology industry experts (the panel will provide immediate feedback but will not be responsible for giving you grades!). The instructor and TAs will select those teams that will present to the panel of technology industry experts – groups will be selected on the basis of quality of work to-date and to ensure appropriate overall variety in Hour #2. Assignment G will be further described in a specific handout.