Week 4 — Pitch It ★
You've built something real. Now tell its story. Week 4 is your public debut: a poster, a live demo, and a 5-minute presentation to university guests, instructors, and peers.
Learning Objectives
By the end of Week 4 you will be able to:
- Communicate a product’s value clearly to a non-technical audience
- Create a professional academic poster
- Give a confident live demo under pressure
- Synthesize 4 weeks of work into a coherent narrative
- Receive and respond to critical questions gracefully
The Final Deliverables
Three things are due on Demo Day:
1. Live Demo (2 min)
A rehearsed, working demo of your robot’s key interaction. Not a video — the robot itself, running live.
Something will go wrong during the demo. Prepare for it: have a backup power source, know how to reboot quickly, and have a “graceful failure” script ready (“Let me restart — while it boots, let me tell you what it just did…”).
2. Academic Poster (A1 or A0)
Your poster is a standalone artifact that tells the full story of your project. It should be readable without you standing next to it.
Poster structure:
| Section | Content | Size |
|---|---|---|
| Title | Robot name + one-line description | Large |
| The Problem | Who is the user? What’s the need? | Medium |
| Our Solution | What the robot does and how | Medium |
| Technology | Hardware stack + LLM integration diagram | Medium |
| Design Process | Key decisions and iterations | Medium |
| Results | User test findings, what worked | Medium |
| Lessons Learned | What you’d do differently | Small |
| QR Code | Links to GitHub repo or demo video | Small |
- One key image per section — photos of your robot, circuit, or users testing it
- Limit text: captions and bullets, not paragraphs
- Use your brand colors consistently
- Print at least one day early — printers break
3. Pitch Presentation (5 min + Q&A)
A 5-minute structured pitch to university guests.
Recommended structure:
00:00 — Hook (30 sec): Open with the user's problem. Make it vivid.
00:30 — Solution (1 min): Introduce the robot. What does it do?
01:30 — Demo (2 min): Live demonstration. Let the robot speak.
03:30 — Under the hood (45 sec): How it works — ESP32, ESP-Claw, LLM.
04:15 — What we learned (30 sec): One design insight, one technical lesson.
04:45 — Close (15 sec): Who should use this. Why it matters.Guests will ask real questions. Don’t be defensive — say “that’s a good question, here’s what we found” or “we don’t know yet, but our hypothesis is…” Intellectual honesty is respected more than false confidence.
Sessions
→ View period-by-period schedule
Session 7 — Monday · Presentation Coaching & Final Prep
Prof. Zhou runs two periods of presentation coaching in the morning. The afternoon is for hardening everything.
Agenda: - Guest: Prof. Zhou — presentation coaching: story, structure & slide design (Part 1) - Guest: Prof. Zhou — presentation coaching: Q&A prep & live feedback (Part 2) - Poster review: content, layout & print finalization · Shimon + Daniel - Demo hardening: run-throughs, backup power, reboot plan · Shimon + Daniel - Full pitch rehearsal with instructor feedback (5 min + Q&A) · Shimon + Daniel - Last design polish · submit poster print file · Daniel
Session 8 — Wednesday · ★ Demo Day
The main event. University guests, all teams presenting simultaneously (poster session format).
Schedule: - Morning (periods 1–2): open preparation, last fixes, rehearsal - Period 3–4: setup — tables, displays, power, poster mounting - Period 5: ★ Poster session & live robot demos (guests circulate freely, ~45 min) - Period 6: ★ Full-group pitches — each team 5 min + 5 min Q&A
At least one team member should always be at the poster to engage with guests. Rotate so everyone gets to walk around and see other teams’ work.
✓ Final Deliverables (Demo Day)
Resources for Week 4
Poster Design
- #BetterPoster Template — Mike Morrison (OSF) — the influential “single big finding in plain language” poster format, free to download
- Ten Simple Rules for a Good Poster Presentation — PLOS — peer-reviewed, evidence-based rules for effective scientific poster communication
- Creating a Scientific Poster — NIH — layout ratios, typography, and content hierarchy from NIH’s training office
- How to Make a Scientific Poster — FourWaves — practical step-by-step with software recommendations
Pitching & Presentations
- How to Build Your Seed Round Pitch Deck — Y Combinator — YC’s canonical slide-by-slide pitch guide (free)
- How to Design a Better Pitch Deck — Y Combinator — why plain, substance-first decks beat flashy ones
- Public Speaking Tips — Toastmasters International — body language, vocal variety, managing nerves, and audience engagement
- Top TED Talks on Public Speaking — TED — learn from master communicators by watching them
🏆 Four weeks. One product. All yours.
Everything you conceive, design, build, and pitch in Maker-X is your work.
Take it further after the course ends.