Suffolk University • Sawyer Business School

Demo Day

Ship it — live demos, peer voting, and the culmination of your agentic AI journey

Session 13 of 13
150 Minutes
40 Students
Hands-On Learning
01 // LEARNING OBJECTIVES

What You'll Learn Today

By the end of this session, you'll have both conceptual understanding and hands-on experience with the foundations of AI.

01

Deliver a Live Demo

Present your agent to the class with a live demo — not slides, not screenshots. Run it in real-time and show it reasoning, using tools, and producing results.

02

Defend Your Decisions

Answer Q&A about your architecture, tool choices, guardrails, and business case. Explain trade-offs and what you'd do differently with more time.

03

Evaluate Peer Projects

Vote on peer projects across four dimensions: Does it work? Is the problem real? Would you trust it? Compelling demo?

04

Reflect on the Journey

From 'what is AI?' to 'I built, evaluated, and pitched an agent product.' Articulate what you learned and how to talk about these skills.

02 // SESSION AGENDA

Today's Journey

A carefully crafted progression from concepts to hands-on building.

5:00 PM - 5:10 PM

Part 1: Demo Day Setup

10 minutes

Format, voting criteria, and order of presentations.

  • Format: 5 minutes live demo + 3 minutes Q&A per team
  • Voting criteria: Does it work? (technical) / Is the problem real? (business) / Would you trust it? (safety) / Compelling demo? (presentation)
  • Order: Randomized. Everyone presents. Everyone votes.
  • Ground rules: Be supportive. Ask constructive questions. Celebrate ambition even when demos crash.
5:10 PM - 6:50 PM

Part 2: Live Demonstrations

100 minutes

Team presentations — live agent demos with Q&A.

  • Each team: 5 min demo + 3 min Q&A (8 min total)
  • Demo must be LIVE — run the agent in Colab/notebook, show reasoning, show tools being called
  • Show test results: accuracy score, consistency, notable failures and how you handled them
  • Business case: Who needs this? What's the ROI? What are the risks? Would you deploy it?
  • Peer voting after each demo via shared form
6:50 PM - 7:00 PM

Break

10 minutes

Catch your breath. Almost done.

7:00 PM - 7:10 PM

Part 4: Awards & Recognition

10 minutes

Peer voting results and awards.

  • Categories: Best Overall Agent / Most Creative Problem / Best Business Case / Most Trustworthy Agent / Best Live Demo
  • Peer vote results announced
  • Professor's choice awards
  • Every team gets recognition for something they did well
7:10 PM - 7:30 PM

Part 5: Course Reflection & Career Forward

20 minutes

From 'what is AI?' to 'I built an agent product.' What this means for your career.

  • The journey: Session 1 (What is AI?) → Session 6 (Agent Patterns) → Session 11 (Evaluation) → TODAY (You shipped a product)
  • What you can now do: Build AI agents, connect real APIs, implement RAG, design multi-agent systems, add guardrails, write test suites, pitch business value
  • Career implications: How to talk about agent-building skills in interviews. Portfolio pieces from this course.
  • The field is moving fast: Agent frameworks, MCP adoption, enterprise deployments — you're entering at the right time
  • Final thought: The code was always simple. The thinking — choosing the right pattern, the right guardrails, the right level of autonomy — that's what matters.
03 // INTERACTIVE RESOURCES

Tools & Learning Materials

Everything you need to explore, experiment, and build.

Voting ?

Peer Voting Form

Rate each team's demo on four criteria: Does it work? Is the problem real? Would you trust it? Compelling demo?

Open form
Archive ?

All Course Materials

Every session's materials, notebooks, and resources — your complete reference for building AI agents.

Browse all sessions
Guide

Building Effective Agents (Anthropic)

The guide that accompanied you all semester. Revisit as you continue building agents after this course.

Read guide
04 // HANDS-ON ACTIVITIES

Learning by Doing

Three interactive challenges to build your intuition.

Activity 1

Live Demo Presentations

Each team presents their final project:

1

Problem Statement (30 sec)

What problem does your agent solve? For whom? Why does it matter?

2

Live Demo (3 min)

Run your agent LIVE. Show it reasoning, calling tools, and producing results. Show at least one edge case or failure recovery.

3

Test Results (30 sec)

Show your evaluation metrics: accuracy, consistency, safety scores. What's your agent's batting average?

4

Business Case (1 min)

Who needs this? What's the ROI? What are the risks? Would you deploy it in production?

5

Q&A (3 min)

Answer questions from peers and professor. Defend your architecture, tool choices, and guardrails.

Activity 2

Course Reflection

Look back on the journey and forward to your career:

1

What Surprised You?

What was the most surprising thing you learned about AI agents this semester?

2

What Would You Build Next?

If you had another semester, what agent would you build? What tools would you add?

3

Career Application

How will you use agent-building skills in your career? What would you put on your resume?

05 // KEY TAKEAWAYS

What to Remember

You shipped a product. Not a homework assignment. Not a tutorial. A real agent that solves a real problem, with tests proving it works and a business case explaining why it matters.

The code was always simple. The agent loop is ~50 lines. ReAct is a system prompt. RAG is search + context. The hard part was always the THINKING — choosing the right pattern for the right problem.

You're entering at the right time. AI agents are going from research demos to enterprise products right now. The skills you built this semester are exactly what companies are hiring for.

Keep building. The frameworks will change. The models will improve. But the patterns — ReAct, RAG, multi-agent, guardrails, evaluation — those are durable. You now speak the language.

06 // HOMEWORK

Before Next Session

Complete these tasks before our next class to prepare for prompt engineering.

Submit: Final project deliverables: Colab notebook (agent + test suite), evaluation results document, and business case slide or write-up.
Reflect: Write a 1-page personal reflection: What did you learn? What surprised you? How will you use these skills? What would you do differently?