Phase I. Survey Report Outline: At most 3 pages, 12 point font (submissions violating these will be penalized!)
Recommended structure for Survey Report (both Research Projects and Entrepreneurial Projects) is:
Survey Submission Instructions: The Survey Report Deadline is February 17, 2011, 11.59 PM. At most 3 + 1 pages, 12 point font - the extra page is only to be used for the business plan (submissions violating these will be penalized!). The 3 pages includes references. To submit, do BOTH of the following by 11.59 PM on February 17, 2013: (1) email your survey report as an email attachment (doc, pdf, or ps only) with Subject line "525 Survey" to indy at illinois dot edu; AND (2) print out a hardcopy (single-sided) and submit it by slipping it under Indy's office door (3112 SC).
What is a Business Plan? Sabeer Bhatia, inventor of hotmail.com, best answers it this way: "
"A business plan is nothing more than your own communication to a person not sitting in front of you-an imaginary person who will read it. Try to answer every possible question that that person could raise. That's the description of a business plan, really. I didn't take any formal lessons. I just sat down and I wrote about the problem we were trying to solve, and in two paragraphs I described the World Wide Web and how it had grown and what its future potential could be. I said, this is the problem today that we are trying to address, this is how we hope to address it, with this idea. This is how we hope to monetize it and this is what page impressions are able to fetch you in the print world. If you translate it into the online world, this is how it will happen. And that's it, that was the core of our business plan."
Phase II. Midterm Report: We will be using double-blind reviewing for the midterm report, for both research projects and entrepreneurial projects. This means that (1) when you submit your midterm report, you should not include your name(s) anywhere in the midterm report, nor reference any of your prior work (if you need to cite this work, you can mark the reference as xxx); (2) your midterm will be peer-reviewed by 3 other anonymous students in the class, whose identities you will not know. (1) is necessary to preserve fairness of reviews and prevent reviewer bias, while (2) is needed to preserve anonymity of reviewers. Indy and the TA will be the only ones to know which report was submitted by which group, and the who reviewers were. See further instructions for writing blind submissions [here]
Entrepreneurial projects must include an updated business plan.
Please note that if your midterm report is not anonymous, it will be returned without being graded. Similarly, if your midterm review (instructions later) is not anonymous, you will not get credit for it.
Your midterm report needs to have (1) some algorithms, (2) some initial implementation, and (3) most importantly, some initial experimental data (mandatory!). While writing the midterm report, you may want to think about, and address the following questions head-on about your work:
Please ensure that your plots print ok on black and white printouts. It is ok to use color, but you cannot solely rely on color to distinguish datapoints or datalines.
Midterm Report Submission Instructions: The Midterm Report Deadline is March 31, 2013 (Sunday), 11.59 PM. At most 8 + 1 pages, 12 point font - the extra page is only to be used for the business plan (submissions violating these will be penalized!). The 8 pages includes references. To submit, do BOTH of the following by 11.59 PM on Sunday March 31: (1) email your survey report as an email attachment (doc, pdf, or ps only) with Subject line "525 Midterm" to indy at illinois dot edu and ihoque2@illinois.edu; AND (2) print out a hardcopy (single-sided) and submit it by slipping it under Indy's office door (3112 SC).
Midterm Review Form: [TXT]
Midterm Review Submission Instructions: The Midterm Review Deadline is April 7, 2013 (Sunday), 11.59 PM. To submit your reviews, email your reviews as email attachment (txt file only) with Subject line "525 Midterm Reviews" to indy at illinois dot edu. No hardcopy is needed.
Phase III. Final Report: A conference-quality paper (for research projects), or the final documentation for your venture (entrepreneurial projects). Focus on the same Questions 0 through 6 above for the midterm report, as well a pay attention to:
Please ensure that your plots print ok on black and white printouts. It is ok to use color, but you cannot solely rely on color to distinguish datapoints or datalines.
Final Report Submission Instructions: At most 12 + 1 pages, 12 point font - the extra page is only to be used for the business plan (submissions violating these will be penalized!). The 12 pages includes references. To submit, do BOTH of the following by 11.59 PM on May 5, 2013 (Sunday): (1) email your survey report as an email attachment (doc, pdf, or ps only) with Subject line "525 Final" to indy at illinois dot edu and ihoque2@illinois.edu; AND (2) print out a hardcopy (single-sided) and submit it by slipping it under Indy's office door (3112 SC).