This week, our primary focus was on preparing for the presentation. To begin with, we had to edit a lot of our powerpoint. Not only did we have to incorporate a lot of the recommendations given in class, but our presentation from last week intentionally had a few slides missing because we were targeting specific input from the audience. So, we had to rebuild our business model, reevaluate our impact on the triple bottom line, and create a rudimentary revenue model and point system to put our abstract idea into concrete numbers. We had to spend quite a bit of time earlier this week to bring our powerpoint up to spec.
We also spent a considerable amount of time preparing for the speaking portion of the presentation. Our general strategy is to prepare individually so that we can get our lines and routine down for the individual parts. Then, we would meet up and practice a full run down of the presentation a few times to connect the parts where we switch off. The judges seemed to really like our presentation and that reflects on how much time we spent preparing for it. Now that the presentations are over, we’ll be reading over the feedback we got in class to see what aspects of our presentation we can improve on. Some notable things suggested include a better revenue model and an explanation for the advantages our company has over normal credit cards (for retailers). Both of these things were in our appendix and we will most likely incorporate them into our core slides. We’ll also be working on our prototype as soon as the NFC reader package arrives. We also plan on meeting with Professor Darwin after break when we can showcase our prototype and our final presentation doc. We’re hoping that we won’t need to make too many changes from then until when we present in India.

The Housing/Transportation Group

Gautham Kesineni, Isabel Viegas De Lima, Helen Fan, Avanishree Kanoria, Aridam Kumar