To whom it may concern,
Finally, it is the week of our final presentation for ALP! All the work we have done in the past three months have led up to this day.
The past week, we have been creating, editing, and practising our presentation non-stop. We spent many days together in our classroom/workspace helping each other out and giving feedback to each other’s parts so that we could give our best on presentation day (See Figure 1).
We were lucky as we did not have physical prototypes to present due to the nature of our project. We would work together in the afternoon and go back to our hostel after dinner. Some other groups were not as fortunate as us, as they stayed up multiple nights in the past week to finalise their prototype, on top of working for their presentation.
However, the lack of prototype was not very beneficial as this would mean our presentation would be a little lacklustre without any product to focus on. Additionally, our project was more like a research project, as there was no final “product” created. In the end, we produced a Machine Learning model. Unlike an application with user interface and graphics etc., our final “product” was just code, nothing interesting that could catch an audience’s attention.
Nonetheless, we went along with it and presented about our project whatever we thought the audience, our peers, would understand and appreciate. The video, slides and poster turned out to be really beautiful and interesting since we had more time on our hands. On top of that, we decided to have a lighter tone during our presentation. Afraid of boring our audience out of their minds with our dry content, we wanted to be livelier and less formal when presenting. We were given 45 minutes on the day before the actual event to rehearse our presentation in the actual venue (See Figure 2). The feeling was really different from practising in our classroom! I felt especially nervous even though there was no one in the audience then. I wondered how I would perform on the actual day.
On the actual day, we did some quick rehearsals before the event began. Some of us were quite nervous, myself included, afraid of stuttering during our parts or forgetting our script. Despite the nerves, we put up a good show! Aside from some technical issues with the slides at the beginning, we all managed to present our parts smoothly. I had the task of concluding the presentation and it was such a relief when I was done with my part! However, it was not over just yet as there was a short Q&A session right after. Some of our fellow ALP students asked some questions and we answered to the best of our abilities. I would like to thank my friends for not throwing tough questions at us!
We ended the presentation with a group photo with our mentors: our professors and teaching assistants (See Figure 3). They were a great help to us during our project. We learnt many new concepts and skills from them about Machine Learning, as well as neuroscience. Without their help, this project would not have been a success.
We feel that there are many aspects our project could branch out into. We wish the best for our mentors as well as our collaborating companies, MO and China Comservice, in finding success working further on this project we started together, and pushing the limits of Machine Learning.
Thank you for taking your time to read through this!
Please find attached love and appreciation.
Best Regards,
Khai Sheen
ALP Theme 4
