Each group consisting of two students should prepare a poster and a four-page abstract on their topic. The posters are presented during poster sessions which will be organized as four hour sessions towards the end of the course. The abstract summarizes the content of the poster in a written form.

Instructions for preparing a poster

There is a lot of help on the web for making posters using PowerPoint (search for "powerpoint posters"). Please note especially the minimum font sizes (22-32 pt) and at least 300 dpi resolution for any images. Use the 100% zoom in PowerPoint to view parts of the poster in the final size. There will be also in Optima a template that you may reuse. Please do not use any background colour to save ink. Author names must be visible in the poster.

Printing a poster

Posters will be printed at the System Administration of our department. You should send printing requests to posters_at_niksula.hut.fi at least two working days before the deadline. You should specify the desired size, let´s use A1 (600x830 mm), and attach a PDF file of the poster which has fonts embedded and high enough resolution for the images.

Instructions for writing a four-page abstract

The abstract should follow the IEEE proceedings format being double column with 10pt font. The templates can be found at http://www.ieee.org/web/publications/pubservices/confpub/AuthorTools/conferenceTemplates.html

Finding material

The course books mentioned in the course description do not provide sufficient information for any of the topics to get a good grade. You should take advantage of the university access to a variety of digital libraries such as ACM Portal and IEEE Xplore. The Nelli-portal is a service that our library offers to give you access to IEEE and ACM publications but you can also directly use the above mentioned portals. (For Nelli you need the service password from the HUT computing center passwords.) An guide for using Nelli is available at the above link (also in English). You can also use simply Google to find articles, links to the digital libraries are indexed by Google. Familiarizing yourself with these tools is also useful for your other studies. (Also note the Refworks link in Nelli.)

Analyzing content

You should seek to find 2-3 key questions or focus points about the subject area or even just one. You should assume that the students have passed at least T-110.4100 Computer Networks, so do not spend precious space for introducing trivial or familiar matters. Instead focus on the unfamiliar, interesting or challenging things.

It is crucial to have the analysis part in your poster and abstract. For example, what is the role of this technology in the greater scheme of things? Can we use it for something, does it have commercial importance, is it still too early to tell? What are the limitations and strengths of this method? What will be the main challenges for these services in the future?

• A critical analysis of the technology. What are its benefits when compared to alternative methods and costs?
• A critical analysis of an analysis and the method. If your subject is an analysis of some technology, you can try to understand if the method used makes sense, and justify your opinion.
• Applicability analysis, can this be used for real? Can I invent a new use for this technology? This type of analysis is not always good, because part of the development process is inventing technologies which are not practical, but advance our knowledge and which can be used for something we did not think about.
• Business analysis, not really the target for our course, but if you do this well enough, it will be interesting. Saying "this will create a new business, because of course little old ladies will want to be able to play the stock market while on a bus" is not a valid business analysis.
• Comparison analysis, take some comparable (maybe competing) existing technology, e.g. another poster topic, and compare it with the one you are presenting.