Networks and Distributed Systems

Q: What do you mean by selling my project? Can't I assume that you are going to like my project anyway since you suggested it in the first place?
You should never assume that your professors already buy in the ideas in your projects: Professors are always forgetful and very skeptical. They enjoy tearing your ideas apart and watching how you defend them. The burden of proving your ideas lies solely on your shoulders. After all, they just suggested some possibilities and it's up to you to tell them why those are good/bad ideas.

Q: How do I sell my project well and get a good grade?
Of course, to get good grade, you must do good work. But it'd be a shame if you have done good work and could not communicate it to others. The number one rule for being a good salesman (for anything) is to put yourself in the shoes of your buyers (i.e. your professors who have the grading power and the other students who have the voting power for their favorate project). Buyers want to know why the project is interesting and here are some concrete questions that are lurking in their minds:

• What's the problem you try to solve/understand?
• Is the problem important? Why is the problem hard (what are the challenges)?
• What's your solution like? How does it compare to existing ones? How does it compare to a simple strawman? Are all the complexities in your system justified?
• Why should I believe that your solution works?
• What's novel in your project?
• What am I supposed to learn from your experience of doing this project?

Q: How do I do a good poster presentation?
There are a number of tips on how to give a good public presentation of your work at conferences:

• How to give a bad talk by John Ousterhout, Tom Anderson, Dave Patterson,
• Giving a Conference Talk by Mike Dahlin.

• succinct. There are different layers of details you might choose to tell me about your project, but remember that I need to listen to 20 project presentations in 2 hours. Summarize the high level ideas of your project to me so I can ask relevant questions to understand the details myself. You should not use more than 8 slides in your poster.
• Avoid lengthy bullet points; use pictures instead. A picture is worth a thousand words and a demonstration of your system is worth even more.

Q: How do I write a good project report?
There are quite a number of good tips on technical writing:

• Writing a technical paperby Michael Ernest
• Advice on writing research papers. by Tao Xie
• The Elements of Style is a general guide on effective writing.