ECE 480 Team’s Program Page Specifications

The final presentations and final demonstrations of ECE 480 projects, including posters and prototypes (whenever possible), and the judging for the awarding of the Prism VentureWorks Prize, will occur on Thursday, December 4, 2008 (judges read final written reports) and Friday, December 5 (oral presentations, demos, and poster displays at the MSU Union Building). You will show your poster and prototype in the Union, and will give your oral presentations in one of the rooms on the third floor or fourth floors. The schedule for your presentations will shortly be posted on the web pages. This event, the fourth College of Engineering Design Day, will be open to the public, and all ECE faculty members have been urged to cancel classes on that day so that many ECE students may participate. The ECE oral presentations will be webcast live – details will follow, for informing distant sponsors and others you’d like to have watch.

Except for the time you are giving your oral presentation, your team is expected to have AT LEAST ONE team member on hand at your poster to describe your work to the many visitors we expect to come through, including judges during their breaks.

An 80-page "glossy" color program will be prepared to publicize the event, and each team in any engineering capstone design course will have a full page in the program in which to describe their project. You will use a template (provided by me below) to supply the materials that will be used to build your page in the program. Each team should provide, in a single directory, named TeamXX, on a CD, labeled with ECE 480 Team XX Fall 2008, the following items:

1) The template file, downloaded from

http://www.egr.msu.edu/classes/ece480/goodman/ECETeamPageTemplate.doc, with all of the material/pictures/etc., filled in for your team’s project.

Then, AS SEPARATE FILES, all of the components you filled in on the template:

2) Two pictures, taken at the highest resolution available with a digital camera of at least 4 megapixels. [You only filled in one picture on the template, but we’d like the designer to have a choice of two pictures for that spot.] SET THE CAMERA SO IT WILL STORE THE PICTURE IN THE HIGHEST RESOLUTION IT IS CAPABLE OF!!! One picture should show some aspect of your team’s work in the laboratory, with some people (team members) if practical. Another should show something like a schematic, block diagram, picture of someone working on a prototype board, or other informative figure, diagram or picture. One of the two pictures should preferably have all or some team members in it, but that is not an absolute requirement. A suitable digital camera is available from Brian or Gregg in the ECE Shop or Linda in the ECE Office. Please store the picture as a tiff or jpeg file, at the highest resolution available. Title the files TeamXX_picture_1 and TeamXX_picture_2. Each picture should be at least 2.5” x 4”, and minimum 800dpi resolution at that size. You may store pictures as larger images, and the designer will reduce them to the size/resolution required.

3) your sponsor’s logo, called “Team_XX_sponsor_logo” at the highest resolution you can obtain it, in a size with the longest dimension about 2-4 inches.

4) text file “TeamXX_description” describing your project and its expected outcome. This description should be between 175 and 250 words. It should describe the goal and approach of the project and the benefits of success. Mention the sponsor in the text. You can briefly explain what is in the accompanying pictures/figures, if that is not obvious. Add one line to the bottom of the description file with the URL of your team’s web page.

5) Team member names, majors, and non-technical roles, in a file called TeamXX_people. Type each name as the team member would like it to appear in the program. Also include the name of the facilitator, labeled as such, and of one or two key contacts at your sponsor, labeled as sponsor contacts.

6) A picture of each student team member, each in a separate tiff or jpeg file labeled with the person’s name. Make each person’s picture a “head-and-shoulders” shot – filling most of the space with the face, as in the faculty members’ pictures on their home pages on the ECE web site. Each picture should be of size 1” high and 0.75”-0.78” wide. Do not distort the aspect ratio of a picture to make it fit – instead, resize it using a fixed aspect ratio and then crop it to the desired shape. This is to be a professional-looking brochure, so please make your individual pictures look professional. You should be wearing a collared shirt or other appropriate “business-casual” dress, or, at the team’s option, business dress. Title each person’s picture with their name, as they would like it to appear under their picture in the program.

6) Facilitator name and picture (may be from departmental web site), titled with person’s name and word “facilitator.”

7) Sponsor contact’s picture, in similar format – PLEASE request this far enough in advance to give your sponsor time to respond!

Please get started assembling this information and the pictures right away. We must get it to the designer well before it must go to the printer. Your page is due to me in class (on a CD, as specified above) on Monday, October 6. I must provide final versions to the designer shortly thereafter, so I cannot extend your deadline without interfering with the overall process.

Re the digital photo(s) (not smaller than 2.5"x4") – make them as interesting as you can, as of the due date…

Note: The sponsor will be separately credited, so the sponsor’s name should not appear in the team’s project title.