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Orbital’s Splashdown workshop is the closing event for Orbital.  It’s a mandatory event for all teams.  Come find out what our newly-minted 2nd year SoCians have been doing over the summer!

Teams, as well as their friends, guests and the general public can participate in the event.  Prizes will be awarded to the top team in each level of achievement, as determined by the course staff and by public voting.

Splashdown 2019 is scheduled on 28 August 2019 from 18:00-21:30!

Help get the word out and tell your friends that you’re going to the event thru Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/859154904456732/!

Splashdown is structured as two back-to-back poster sessions followed by an awards ceremony;  Orbital teams will be assigned to one of two sessions to present their work.  During each of the two poster sessions, each team will be presenting their work via a A1 sized poster that they will have to prepare and print (pre-paid for you at SoC Technical Services).

Splashdown will also feature peer voting for best projects.  During the poster sessions, take note of which other teams you think did the best projects and vote for their project electronically using your smart phone or tablet.  We’ll tally your votes and announce the winner at the end of Splashdown at the awards ceremony.  Guests (first years, and seniors) are also welcomed to attend and will need to register for the event to be given voting privileges; see the Splashdown page soon, when that information is updated.

Below you can find the current mapping from team names to poster sessions / locations.  These are subject to change, but basically the projects of the same level of achievements are co-located to be near each other.

Frequently Asked Questions

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. For example, Alpacash’s project ID is 1014 (Session 1, Location 014). Project IDs are four digits, with your poster board location’s number padded to three digits.

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 prizes will be give to the best projects, 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.

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.  The facilities team may also instead provision a blue student examination table to each project, at their discretion.  Power outlets will generally not be available, so as such, please come with any electronic devices (phone, laptop) charged if possible and be courteous and relinquish your power supply to other teams who need to recharge their depleted power.

Q: When do we have to be there to set up?

A: Presenters in the first session can set up their posters as soon as the space is open.    Presenters for the second session set up when the first session takes down at the in-between session break.  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.

Q: Do we have to do on-site registration? If so, when should I do it?

A: Registration starts at 17:30. Only external guests should come to the registration desk (near the entrance of Cerebro) to pick up your Voter ID for the evening. You’ll need to keep track of what 3 projects you think are the best to vote on, so that’s why you need your Voter ID.  Project team members should receive a voter ID by email from Jin.  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.

Q: How and when can we print our posters?

A: You should put the file for your poster (preferably in PDF or Powerpoint format) on a thumbdrive and take it to Technical Services in COM 1 Level 1. The staff there will help you print the poster. Don’t forget to have your student card ready for identification purposes. You may print anytime from roughly 22 Aug (i.e., one week before the event) onwards.  Be aware it takes time for the posters to print and that each team is only sponsored 1 A1 sized poster, 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 26 Aug, due to potential queues during the 27 Aug.

Q: What is the difference between the voter IDs and the project IDs? Should we include our project ID in the poster?

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. 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. 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 28 Aug (Wed).  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 close the accounts after 28 Aug, 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.

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.  But since you asked: Google has sponsored prizes for the top three teams and they are ** n i c e **. 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.