OIM6301 Programming for Business Analytics
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Lightning Talks

On this page
  1. The talk
  2. The discussion
  3. What to talk about
  4. How to sign up
  5. Preparing
  6. A few short reads

A lightning talk takes four minutes at the start of a session. You spend two minutes on something you built, broke, or found, then run two minutes of discussion yourself. The syllabus says how a talk counts toward your grade in this course. It is graded on whether it happened, and polish is not part of the grade.

The talk#

Cover one idea in your two minutes. A tutorial or a deep dive will not fit.

Present live from your screen. Slides are optional, and three screens is plenty. A demo that breaks partway through is fine. If you present from a file such as a PDF, push it to your course repository, open it on GitHub, and paste the address from your browser into the Link to your slides box on the Lightning Talks board. The address looks like https://github.com/<your-github-username>/<course-code>/blob/main/lightning-talk.pdf. Do not email your slides.

The discussion#

Close on a question your classmates can disagree about, put it to the room, and call on people yourself. Write the question while you build the talk. A question works when both of these are true:

  • It has more than one defensible answer. "Should a company let an agent write the SQL behind a board report?" gives people something to argue, and "Is data quality important?" does not.
  • Everybody in the room can answer it, because it comes from something they have all done. "Has anyone had a number come back that looked plausible and was wrong? How did you catch it?"

If nobody speaks in the first few seconds, call on someone by name.

What to talk about#

Pick one thing from your week. When you claim a day, you have to choose one of these categories:

  • AI. An agent you gave real work to and where it went wrong, or a prompt pattern that changed what came back.
  • Data. A dataset from your industry and what one row of it means, or a public source worth knowing about.
  • Tech. A tool, a function, or a technique you now use.
  • Business. A metric your company argues about, a report that misled somebody, or a vendor claim you would want to audit.
  • Discussion. A question you want the room to weigh in on.

How to sign up#

  1. Open the Lightning Talks board on the course site.
  2. Click Sign in with GitHub and use the account on your course roster.
  3. On an open day, click Claim this day, pick a category, and click Save. The topic can wait.
  4. Set your topic at least 24 hours before your class starts. Click Edit in the line that shows your sign-up.

Days open a few at a time, so check back if the day you want is not there yet. Each day closes 24 hours before its class starts. After that, nobody can claim it and you cannot change your topic. You can still cancel, or move your talk to a day that is open, until class starts. Claim a day early, because the last few sessions fill first.

Preparing#

Plan about 90 seconds of material, because setup and anything you forgot take up the rest. Start with the reason the room should care, and put what you are talking about on screen, such as the query and the number it returned. Rehearse out loud with a timer. Reading it silently will not show you where you run long.

A few short reads#

Last updated: Sunday, 11/1/2026