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A graduate seminar: current topics in computer security
 

Presentation HOWTO

You’re going to be required to give several in-class presentations from the reading list. Here’s what you need to know.

Signing up

Once I’ve got everybody’s Gmail user names, I’ll set up a shared spreadsheet where you’ll see the slots labeled with what sort of presentations will be in each group. If you want to give one of the smartphone papers, then you need to sign up in one of the smartphone slots. When you sign up, be sure to put the paper title you want into the “description” slot.

What do I do in my presentation?

For many, but not all, of these papers, you’ll be able to find online slides, typically in PDF format. You’re welcome to start from them, but that doesn’t release you from making good slides of your own. Here’s what I expect you to do:

  • Introduce the problem the paper is trying to solve. Spend some good time on this. It’s easy to get lost in what they did without explaining why it’s important. Motivate the audience to appreciate the paper.
  • Describe how the approach in this paper is better than prior approaches. That means you’re going to have to read other papers and have an informed opinion about prior work. Be specific. Don’t say “nobody’s ever done this before.” Discuss earlier attempts/failures. Discuss the ramifications of earlier failures. This will require some digging on your part, typically going beyond whatever slides you find from the authors.
  • Explain the core ideas and observations of your paper. Describe the theory behind their work and how this enabled them to build something cool. (All of our papers have some amount of theory and implementation within them.)
  • Describe the experimental results of the paper. Don’t just cut and paste the graphs out of the paper. Explain why features of the graphs are interesting or relevant. Rather than waving a laser pointer around, use animations in the slides to bring circles or boxes or arrows in to point to relevant features of the data.
  • Pontificate about what’s next. If somebody gave you a million dollars and said to go and do whatever the next logical step is after this paper, what would that be? Would you go back and fill in holes in the paper or would you use this as a jumping point to do something novel now that you understand what the paper has to say?

Remember that we have a full 50 minute slot for the class. That all belongs to you. You have a lot more time than the standard conference talk, which is typically only 20-25 minutes. You should use that time to your advantage. Go read other papers, both past and future on the same topic, and make sure you put the paper in context. You should shoot for 40 minutes of material, with the rest of the time being consumed by people asking you questions.

Should I practice in advance?

You betcha! Rice’s Center for Written, Oral, and Visual Communication can help you.  Visit their web site and set up an appointment. Plan to practice at least three days in advance so you’ve got time to incorporate what you learned. If your first practice is the day before you present, it’s too late. Your presentation (and the other students in the class, not to mention your grade) will suffer.

How many of these talks do I need to do?

Ultimately that depends on how many students we end up with in the class. Last year, everybody did three presentations, and we did them in groups of two.

How am I graded?

You’re graded on two basic things: the technical quality of your talk (based on the points above) and the presentation quality. The latter concerns whether your talk is practiced and coherent. Are your slides helpful and well-designed? Are you just reading the words on the slides or do you really know the material? In short, how well do you communicate the material?

What if I’m not presenting?

You are expected to read the day’s paper(s) prior to the start of class. Everybody in the room is expected to discuss the paper together. If you arrive and you haven’t done the reading, you’re hurting your fellow students by not participating. If you just sit there and don’t say anything, it will effect your grade. Hint: after reading the paper, have two or three questions in your mind that you’d like to ask about it. Come to class with burning questions that you can’t wait for the speaker to answer.