Demo Day is when we invite others to see the projects that you have been working on over this module. It’s a chance for us all to come together to see what you’ve achieved!

You’ll present your product using a combination of presentations, live demonstrations and videos.

The goals of Demo Day are:

1. Celebrate your achievements: You’ve worked hard over the module, and this is a chance to show off what you’ve learned and built.
2. Explain your work to others: You need to be able to discuss your work fluently. This project will be the key part of your portfolio, so you need to be able to talk about it confidently in interviews.
3. Get feedback: You’ll get feedback from your peers, mentors and other guests. This feedback will help you improve your project and your presentation skills for the real challenge: job interviews.

Introduction

• Don’t spend time talking about the volunteers that helped with your project - the demo day is about you! (It’s fine, the volunteers already know that you appreciate it!)
• It’s a good idea to say what type of job that you’re interested in - so if you’d like to be a backend dev, say so!

Presentation

• When you talk about challenges, make sure you say how you solved it. If you didn’t manage to solve it, then talk about what you tried to solve it
• Talk about how you communicated and collaborated with each other (Github, Slack, calls, etc). Remember that this is a big part of a developer’s day so it’s a good idea to show that you have experience of this

Demo

• Have a script for the demo and practice it! You should be able to talk without thinking too much about it
• Practice switching between demo and slides so that you don’t waste too much time on it
• Use tabs to pre-fill forms - we don’t need to see you type out stuff, especially if you don’t explain it
• Use Incognito mode to prevent logging into/out. With incognito mode, you can be logged into multiple accounts at once
• Consider recording a (silent) video of the demo - what if there’s no internet? Or the app goes down? But remember that this is your best chance to make a personal impression; Never stand there silently while a video talks!
• Get someone to hold the mic if you’re typing/demoing - then you have two hands!
• Make the font size bigger so people can see it at the back of the room. (Ctrl-+ on Windows/Linux or Cmd-+ on Mac)

Common questions after the demo

It’s a good idea to prepare answers for these questions:

• What was your biggest challenge?
• How did you handle conflicts in your team?
• If you were starting from scratch would you change anything?
• How did you test your app?
• How does your app work on mobile devices?
• Did you think about accessibility?

Complete your project README, explaining what it does and how to use it

• You MUST make sure your README is filled out and presents your project clearly. If it just contains boilerplate information it looks like you haven’t done anything, so you may as well just throw your project in the bin! Don’t make this basic mistake.
• Make sure your repo is linked on your deployed site and your deployed site is linked on your repo. Help employers find you.
• Fork your group project to your personal Github and pin it to your profile. Help employers find you.

Generally imagine that employers are now looking at your work: you are launching into the world!

Personal README

You should also complete your personal README.

A good profile/ Readme has:

• Your name
• A professional profile picture
• Contact details (As a minimum, connect to your Linkedin and Portfolio)
• Your profession (i.e. ‘Developer’ or ‘Software Engineer’)
• A list of key skills (3 to 5, no more)
• An introduction to your projects

Don’t cover your profile with awards and auto-generated stats.