Reflections On My Team’s Presentation

For some reason, I was extremely nervous before our presentation. I kept wondering how we should structure it: Who would introduce each section? How would we present our shared challenges? And which tool—Figma, Canva, or Google Slides—would best showcase our work? Thankfully, Vasily jumped in early and built a presentation skeleton in Figma. That initial framework made it significantly easier to flesh out content and visuals afterward.

Once we had the Figma template, we aligned our slides with Professor Klukowska’s recommended outline, ensuring a clear flow from context to conclusions. We divided our contribution highlights into four subsections—Translation, Documentation Fixes, UI Features, and Unit Testing—and then took turns presenting each area, depending on where we made the most contributions. This division allowed each team member to focus on their strongest work, while the audience could easily follow the progression of our project (hopefully, that was the case!)

One of my favorite moments was when we applied Mattermost’s official logo, fonts, and color palette throughout the slides. It lent an authentic “core team” vibe and reinforced our intent to contribute as if we were part of the project’s maintainers, which was a fun play-pretend. This consistency in branding made our slides look polished and professional, in my humble opinion 😎

I was also proud that none of us leaned heavily on speaker notes. We practiced enough to speak naturally about our work, supporting each other with eye contact and seamless handoffs. During our rehearsal, my biggest worry was whether we could talk for more than 12 minutes—yet on our first full run-through, we hit just under 20 minutes, perfectly within the allotted time!

Overall, this presentation taught me the importance of early planning, collaborative slide design, and rehearsal. By dividing responsibilities clearly and aligning on visuals, we delivered a cohesive, engaging overview of our project. I feel more confident about public speaking and excited to apply these lessons in future presentations.