3. Engineering Summit : Technical Defense
Day 5. Your system is built. Your evidence is logged. Your outline is sketched.
Today you turn all of that into a defense. Then you test it on another firm — the only audience who's seen what you've seen. By the end of the day, your firm has done its Engineering Summit defense once, live, with feedback. July 9 is just the second time.
Four days of work. Take 60 seconds with your firm and account for what you've actually got in your hands:
- A working catapult that hits a 24" × 24" target zone
- A gravity-powered delivery track with a curve or loop
- An integrated full system that delivers payloads end-to-end
- A reliability streak (whatever you hit — 5, 7, 10) backed by a failure log
- A firm name, tagline, logo sketch, and profile
- A logbook full of data, sketches, and evidence
- An outlined defense, with sections assigned to each firm member
That's not a starting line. That's a finishing line. Today is polish.
Open your Day 4 outline. Every row of that outline becomes one slide. Don't overthink the design — clarity over polish.
Your firm picks one. Whatever your Presentation Lead is fastest in:
- Google Slides — easy to share between firm members, works on any device
- PowerPoint or Keynote — if your device has it
- Canva — if you want pre-designed templates
- Phone photo deck — photos arranged in a folder on your phone, swiped through during the defense. Lower polish, fully acceptable.
If anyone in your firm has built a slide deck before, they're your Presentation Lead today regardless of original assignment.
The single most common mistake: stuffing every slide with text and then reading it out loud.
The rule: Each slide has ONE main thing — one big image, one big number, one big claim. The talking is what fills in the rest. Slide text is for the room to know where you are in the defense, not what you're saying.
Test: if you can describe a slide's purpose in 6 words or fewer, it's tight enough.
Follow your Day 4 outline. Each firm member builds the slides for the sections they're presenting. Work in parallel — three to four members can build at once if you share one deck.
| 1. Firm Profile (name, logo, tagline, members) | 1 slide |
| 2. The Problem (the hospital contract) | 1 slide |
| 3. The Physics (energy, projectile, gravity, centripetal) | 1–2 slides |
| 4. Process & Iteration (before/after, what broke) | 2 slides |
| 5. The Data Story (table or graph + your best stat) | 1–2 slides |
| 6. Live Demo (or video if a live run is too risky) | 1 slide + the demo itself |
| 7. What's Next (what you'd change, what's the future) | 1 slide |
Use the photos and video your Presentation Lead captured. Use the data tables from your logbook. The work is already done — slides just put it in front of an audience.
Stop hunting for the perfect font. Stop redesigning the title slide. The test defense is in 30 minutes and feedback will tell you what actually needs fixing — not your gut at minute 12.
Done is better than pretty. Get to a complete first draft. Refine after feedback.
Before another firm sees your defense, you run it once in private. This is where the awkward transitions, the unclear data, and the over-long sections all become obvious.
Start a timer on a phone. Run the whole defense, start to finish. Each presenter takes their section. No restarts. No "let me try that again." When something feels wrong, push through — make a note and fix it after.
Target length: 12–15 minutes total. Under 10 = you're skimming. Over 18 = the review board is checking their phones.
Right after the run-through, each firm member says one thing about their OWN section that didn't feel right:
- Words I tripped over
- A slide I couldn't explain in plain English
- A point where I lost the thread
- A handoff to the next presenter that felt jerky
Then fix those things on the spot — 5 minutes max. If a fix takes longer than 5 minutes, leave it for after the test defense.
The handoff between presenters is the most common place a defense falls flat. Standardize yours:
End your section with a one-sentence summary: "So that's how we landed on a 12-inch starting height."
Hand off cleanly: "Maya will walk you through our data." Then Maya steps in and starts.
Practice 2–3 handoffs out loud. Don't wing this part.
This is the live test. Camp staff will pair your firm with another firm. You'll defend to them. Then they'll defend to you. The only person who's seen what you've built this week is sitting across from another team that's done the same.
Staff will assign pairings. Find your partner firm and pick a corner of the room. Decide who presents first — flip a coin if you can't agree.
Full defense. Every presenter takes their section. Use your slides and your system. If a live demo is part of your plan, do it.
The listening firm asks 2–3 real questions. The presenting firm answers.
- "What's the part of your system most likely to fail at the Summit?"
- "If you had another full day, what would you change?"
- "You said your reliability was X/5 — how would that hold up with a heavier payload?"
- "Walk me through the physics again — slower this time."
"I don't know" is a fine answer in real engineering — followed by "but here's how we'd find out." Faking it is worse than admitting it.
The listening firm gives feedback. Skip "good job" and "you did great." Useful feedback is specific. Use these prompts:
- The clearest moment: "The moment I understood your firm best was when ___"
- The fuzziest moment: "I got lost when you said ___"
- The surprise: "I didn't expect ___ — and it landed"
- The one fix: "Before July 9, change ___"
The presenting firm writes the feedback into the Defense Feedback page of their 📋 Engineering Firm Logbook. Don't defend yourself, don't explain — just take the notes.
Now the other firm defends. Repeat Parts II–IV. You're the listening firm now — bring the same sharpness to your feedback that you wanted to receive.
You have one feedback round and a stack of notes. Time to act on the ones that matter — and save the work in a place you'll find it again on July 9.
You won't act on every note. Pick the 1–2 changes that would make the biggest difference. Likely candidates:
- The slide the other firm called "fuzzy" — rewrite or replace
- The section that ran too long — cut it in half
- The handoff that felt awkward — write a clean transition line
- The Q&A question you stumbled on — write a 2-sentence answer now while it's fresh
Make the changes. Don't redo the whole deck.
Upload your deck (or photos of it) to the firm-shared 📁 ASPIRE Padlet. QR code on your table.
- Upload your final slide deck (or PDF export, or screenshots)
- Upload your best end-to-end run video
- Upload your hero photos (3–5 of the strongest)
- Title each post with your firm name
Your physical build stays where it is — we'll have it ready for you on July 9. Your logbook goes home with you.
The last page of your 📋 Engineering Firm Logbook is yours. Fill it in:
- What's the strongest part of your firm's defense?
- What's the weakest part — and what would fix it?
- What one thing will you change before July 9 if you have time?
- What did you learn this week that you didn't expect to learn?
This is the part of the week where we hand the firm back to you. We don't get to come with you to the Summit. The defense you've built is yours.
- Your physical system stays in this room. We'll have it on the Summit floor for you on July 9.
- Your slide deck is on the Padlet. Any firm member can pull it up.
- Your logbook goes home with your firm — pass it around if needed.
- Nothing is required between now and July 9. Iteration is up to you.
If your firm wants to refine slides, rehearse, or sharpen one section before the Summit — you have the access. If you don't, the test defense you ran today already proved your firm can do this.
The hardest skill in engineering isn't building — it's defending what you built to people who didn't build it. Every engineer at a company like Medtronic, Boston Scientific, or GE Healthcare spends a real percentage of their time doing exactly what you did today: turning a complicated technical project into a clear story for a review board, a regulator, a hospital administrator, or an investor. The teams who win contracts are usually not the ones with the best builds — they're the ones who can explain their builds best. You just did the harder of the two skills.
Five days. One contract. You walked in cold and walked out as a firm. You designed a launch system. You designed a receiving system. You integrated them. You defended your work to another team of engineers and they didn't tear it apart — they sharpened it.
We'll see you July 9 at the Summit.