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This is the authoritative page for official instructions and information for Orbital students about Splashdown 2015, so please refer to this page. Only important class-wide updates about Splashdown 2015 will be posted to Slack.
Dear Invitees: (exclusive of Orbital students): please register your attendance by filling out this quick registration form (not yet ready; see next year’s event).
Jump [ Media ] [ Event Schedule ] [ SR1 Layout ] [ Frequently Asked Questions ]
Splashdown Overview
Orbital’s Splashdown workshop is the closing event for NUS SoC’s summer self-study module for first year students. Come find out what our SoCians have been doing over the summer!
Teams, as well as their friends, guests and the general public can participate in the event (Register here). Prizes will be awarded to the top team in each level of achievement, as determined by the facilitators of the course and by public voting.
Media
Event Schedule
Splashdown will be held on 19 August from 18:00-21:00 at SoC’s SR1 and Lobby (Seminar Room 1).
Updated 12 Aug 2015
| SPLASHDOWN SCHEDULE | |
|---|---|
| 18:00-18:55 | Poster Session 1 |
| 18:55-19:05 | Changeover |
| 19:05-20:00 | Poster Session 2 |
| 20:00-20:30 | Invited Talks |
| 20:30-21:00 | Awards Ceremony |
SR1 Layout
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: I’m an Orbitee. Do I have to come to Splashdown?
A: All teams must mandatorily present a poster about their completed project. All teams must prepare an A1 sized poster and printed at Technical Services in COM1. Poster printing for this event is sponsored and will not cost you any money. Team should go to the technical services counter of a PDF or PPT version of their A1 poster for printing, and just tell them that you are printing for your team as part of Orbital. You may have to show your Matric card for verification.
Q: Will there be food and drink?
A: Unfortunately, no. Please ensure to come with your bellies full and with enough water to last during the session. It’s been our experience that Splashdown is a lively event with lots of buzz; so continually presenting your posters can be tiring. Keep hydrated!
Q: How do I figure out my project ID?
A: It’s your poster session (1 or 2), followed by your poster board’s location. Project IDs are three digits, with the lead digit being your poster session number and the last two digits being your poster board location’s number padded to two digits. For example, in the above picture Strawberry Burger would take poster #01, in the first (1) session = 1 + 01 = 101.
Your project ID is important as this is how we determine best project for each achievement level. Your evaluation group (peers under the same advisor) will be largely participating in the same poster session next to each other.
Q: What should the contents of the poster be about?
A: Great question! It’s up to you. Probably you want to differentiate your project from others, so if you are doing a Python/GAE project for example, most of the cohort will already be familiar with (some of) the technical aspects. You could discuss the motivation, testing, the documentation and libraries used. If you have the application on a smartphone, laptop or tablet, you may also want to demo your working application (hiding the bugs, of course).
Remember that Google SG is giving away prizes to best project, where you (and us) have voting privileges to help determine the winners, so whatever you want to do to curry favor with your peers is a-ok (within NUS policy, of course). You’ll find that marketing is a very big key for technology acceptance in the real world, anyways. You can check out similar poster sessions at the STePS events, done by your seniors:
http://steps.comp.nus.edu.sg/steps6/media.php
for ideas on content.
Q: How large should our posters be?
A: Your poster should be A1 sized (841 x 594 mm)
Q: Should I mount my poster in portrait or landscape format?
A: Both are possible. The poster board mounts are 1x1m.
Q: What will the presentation stations for each project consist of?
A: We will be able to guarantee each project a side of a posterboard, large enough to mount an A1 sized poster on. Most projects will have to share a grey 1 m console table with another project, as space and the availability of console tables makes them limited resources. No power outlet will be available to charge devices, so please come with any electronic devices (phone, tablet, laptop) charged.
Q: When do we have to be there to set up?
A: Presenters for Poster Session 1 can set up their posters as early as 5:30pm. Presenters for the Poster Session 2 can set up during the ten minute transition period between both poster sessions. Please take down your posters and clear your station after your poster session. Note that you may have provide your own mounting tape and pins for the posterboard. Please do dispose/recycle posters properly; we will have bins for exactly this purpose.
Q: Do we have to do on-site registration? If so, when should I do it?
A: Only if you are a guest (NUS external, or non-Orbital student / staff coming down to support the event, or Orbital student who didn’t complete the course).
See the registration link.
If you are a guest, you should come to the registration desk (near the entrance of SR1) during registration from 17:30 onwards to pick up your Voter ID for the evening. You’ll need to keep track of what projects you think are the best to vote on, so that’s why you need your Voter ID. If you’re not planning to vote, that’s fine, you won’t need to register.
Current Orbital students do not need to register. Members of your project team can take turns going to the other projects to grade and see what else is out there that’s cool and worth knowing about. Current Orbital students will be sent an email before the event with their Voter ID.
Q: When can we print our posters?
A: Anytime between now and 19 August. Be aware it takes time for the posters to print and that each team is only sponsored 1 A1 sized poster, to be printed at Technical Services in COM 1 Level 1 (if you need to re-print, you’ll have to pay on your own). We strongly encourage you to print early, no later than the 18th, due to potential queues during the 19th.
Q: Is it possible to release the voter IDs in advance so as to include the ID into the poster design?
A: The voter IDs are what you use for voting for best projects. The project ID is the number that uniquely identifies your project number (see the above for in the SR1 Layout; all projects in Poster Session 1 will start with ‘1’ and likewise for Poster Session 2), and they are different than the project IDs that were assigned during Ignition and Liftoff (sorry for the confusion). They will be posted on the poster board itself so that everyone can identify projects uniformly, in the same manner.
However, if you wish to still repeat the project ID on your poster you’re welcomed to. The Splashdown page already lists the project ID. Basically it corresponds to the position of the poster board where you’ll be presenting, prefixed by a ’1′ or ’2′ for which poster session you’ll be in (see earlier question and answer in FAQ).
Q: Must the contents on A1 poster be printed or can we draw/paste stuff on it? Can we just take a blank piece of A1 paper from the technical services without printing?
A: Anything goes! You can do whatever you want with your one piece of A1 quota (sponsored by Google!). Be creative! It’ll be attached to a poster board so it shouldn’t be too heavy or break the center of gravity with the poster on the other side (there’s another team presenting on the back). If you want to just take a single sheet without printing, our advice is to buy your own sheet of A1 paper, so that if you want to print color things to paste to the sheet, you can still print a A1 sized paper to cut out/collage/etc. for later.
The A1 sized paper offer is for Splashdown only and will not be available to you (even if you don’t use it) after 19 August, Wednesday. Theoretically you can use the A1 for anything you want if you don’t use it for Orbital (e.g., printing K-pop boy/girl band poster for your dorm room), but we’ll have to settle the account after 19 August, Wednesday, so print soon. Though tech services might be wondering how it’s related…
Q: Will our posters be vetted first before printing?
A: Thanks for your question! No, we do not intend to vet your posters. We trust that you will exercise prudence in printing content on your posters. They will be viewable by the general public — so please do not put anything controversial on the posters (profanity, personal information, etc.). If in doubt, feel free to ask us directly via email or Slack. Google is sponsoring the poster printing, so you can thank them for it, but they wish not to have their logo shown on your poster (for legal purposes, I’m told).
Q: What prizes will be awarded during Splashdown?
A: Actually, you’ve already won the best prize of all — self-confidence and the ability to find and use technical information on the web to accomplish tasks. Of course, we all learned valuable lessons that will help the next time we have to do project management (likely this coming semester!). But since you asked: Google has sponsored prizes for the top team in each level of achievement. Up your game and work on your soft skills to best promote your project to your peers and to the invitees that will attend the Splashdown event, and clinch the coveted top prize in category — you’ll need more than technical skill to do this!
Q: A1 sized posters are pretty bulky and not very fun to carry around, much less back and forth. Is there any provision for poster storage?
A: Yes! If you do print your poster early (as we advise, technical services may not be able to handle any last minute, last day requests), you can store them in the Undergraduate Office (COM1 #02-19). Just come by the UG office after printing and rolling up your poster, and ask for Ms Rachel Lum Fong Teng. She will direct you to store your poster somewhere in my sub-office within the UG office. On the day of Splashdown, you can come by and collect your poster before 5pm for mounting on the poster board (the UG office will close and be locked after 5pm).
Q: I would like to inquire about the dress code for the Orbital Splashdown tomorrow. What are we supposed to wear?
A: You may wear any attire that you’d like. There will be a group photograph per level of achievement and you may be photographed for SoC’s and Google’s publicity. If you are uncomfortable with this, please do let us know and we’ll try our best not to have you in any public photographs.
Q: Also, for the project that my group did, we can’t host it online for the public to test or download. Do we have to bring our laptop to showcase during the presentation?
A: If you have the video of your third milestone publicly available you
may want to show that instead of a demo, since that might run on
other devices (e.g. a powered smartphone).
Q: Regarding the presentation you’d mention in Slack, will the presentation/pitch be on stage or at our booth?
A: All teams will be doing presentations of their posters at their own poster stands. No teams are required on stage this time (no time for everyone to go). The Orbital staff will be reviewing teams whose achievement level are in question. If you do not receive any notice or warning from your advisors or from myself or Wee Sun between now and the 19th, you have been deemed to achieve the level of achievement that you have aimed for
Q: What about previous iterations of Splashdown?
A: Yes, we keep that information around too. See Splashdown 2014 here.
Splashdown 2015 Event Registration
Date/Time
Date(s) – 19/08/2015
6:00 pm – 9:00 pm
Location
School of Computing COM1 Level 2 (SR 1 and SR 1 Lobby)
Categories
Hello! Use this event ticket page to request a ticket for the Splashdown event if you’re not a current SoC Orbital participant.
Make sure to scroll all the way down to select your ticket type! For first-year students who learned about Orbital during Freshmen Orientation Week and activities, please register using the corresponding ticket category below. For all others, please make sure to choose the correct ticket category.
You don’t need to provide any evidence of registration for the event, so there’s no need to print or email the registration before coming. Your registrations help us better understand how our attendance breaks down. Thanks very much for your cooperation!
You will be able to use this ID to help select the best project in each achievement level. Please leave your email so that we can send you the voter ID!
For those who don’t wish to help with voting, no worries — you can walk in to Splashdown without registering. Note that no food or beverage will be served during the event.
For current Orbital students who are presenting, you should not register — you’re automatically registered; since your attendance is mandatory. If you invite friends or other students, please do have them register on this page. Orbital students who did not complete the programme but whom wish to come to Splashdown, please do register as a guest. If you’re looking for the detailed Splashdown page with instructions for your (Orbital student) participation, use the Splashdown navigation menu item above.
Please ensure you provide a valid email address. We’ll be using this to provide you with a code for voting for best project for each level of achievement. Best projects at each of the three levels of achievement will win a team prize sponsored by Google!
How does Splashdown work? Splashdown is the closing event for the self-study Orbital module in the School of Computing. Students have been working throughout the summer to learn and create an IT product (often a web application) of their own inspiration. You will see the projects that they have created during this showcase and hear about how the industrial world and SoC work together to help students help themselves to level up in their programming and developer talents!
What’s the agenda like? Well, here’s the rundown about the event for the night of the 19th:
6:00-6:55pm: First poster session
6:55-7:05pm: Transition
7:05-8:00pm: Second poster session
8:00-8:30pm: Invited talks
8:30-9:00pm: Prize ceremony and closing
Do we have to stay for the whole event? Students in Orbital are required to stay for the whole session. Other guests, please feel free to boost the teams you know and stick around to hear the oral session but you are welcomed to come and go as you please. There are two separate poster sessions with entirely different projects and teams, so do try to see both sessions!
Bookings
Bookings are closed for this event.