Future of work - final presentation (DM2571)

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This time of the year (actually early December), I usually publish an invitation to the final presentation in the course Future of Media. Here's last year's invitation to the final presentation ("The Future of Computer Games/Computer Games of the Future"). I didn't this year because I for once agreed with the students to keep the final presentation small.

This year's theme has been "The Future of Work/Work of the Future" and it is the very last time the course is given. I thought that was the case last year, but this time it really was the last time as the course has now been replaced by another (project) course. See further the blog post I wrote when the course started back in September and the blog post with the line-up of guest lecturers that I wrote in mid-October.

Making the final presentation a small rather than a big event meant a couple of different things:
- With less than 25 students taking the course (instead of the usual 50-75), there were only six project groups instead of the usual 10-12 groups.
- Also there was no "executive group" this year. Such a group usually works with "producing" various aspects of the course (a book, a final presentation, a website, promotion of the final presentation etc.)
- While the students' deliverables were the same as usual, we made the final presentation an in-class event with basically no audience at all.

The downsizing of the course (fewer students), the fact that the course won't be given again and the fact that more than 75% of the students came from the master's program in "Media Management" made this course round special compared to previous course rounds. Something else that made this year's course special was the extremely high quality of this year's final project presentations. When I saw them I kind of regretted not making a big thing out of it because I think more people deserved to see these presentations.

I'd have to say that there were no weak presentations and that there were no less two presentations that were outstanding - as good as anything I've ever seen in the 15 years I have given the course and so good that I wish I could award then a higher grade than "A". There have of course been a handful of outstanding presentations before, but I'm not sure there has been two presentation that were this strong in one and the same year before (this year no less than a third of the presentations were outstanding). The outstandingness of two particular presentations should not take away from the fact that also the remaining four presentations were all very strong.

A great end to a great course!
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