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  • [MUSIC PLAYING]

  • SPEAKER: This is CS50.

  • DAVID MALAN: Hello, world.

  • This is the CS50 podcast.

  • My name is David Malan.

  • BRIAN YU: My name is Brian Yu.

  • And today, we thought we'd talk a little bit about the CS50 Fair, which

  • takes place at the end of CS50 every semester,

  • an opportunity for students to show off their final projects.

  • I've been to, what is it now, five CS50 Fairs, I think.

  • Now, how many CS50 Fairs have there been?

  • DAVID MALAN: There have been 12, and I have been to all 12 of them.

  • BRIAN YU: All right.

  • What was the first one like?

  • DAVID MALAN: The first one was similar in spirit to what you see now,

  • if any of you listening online have seen any of the photographs or video footage

  • from them.

  • But it was smaller scale.

  • BRIAN YU: Was this the first year that you taught the class,

  • or does it come about later?

  • DAVID MALAN: This was second year.

  • So this was in 2008, when we had 287 students in the class.

  • So it was a smaller scale event.

  • We divided it into just a couple-- two or three shifts of students,

  • with maybe 100 or so students, give or take,

  • presenting their final projects at any one time.

  • But it was in our original space on campus, the building of a basement

  • called Northwest Science, which is one of the science buildings on campus,

  • with a big concrete floor area, lots of tall ceilings and pillars

  • that we were able to set up a whole lot of tables

  • on for students to present their final projects.

  • BRIAN YU: And the CS50 Fair now-- especially for people

  • who've seen it online, probably have seen photos of what it looks like now.

  • It's fancy.

  • There are balloons.

  • There's high tables with nice tablecloths all over it.

  • Was it like that from the beginning, or what was the first CS50 Fair

  • like visually?

  • DAVID MALAN: Yeah, it was actually-- so the whole intent of the CS50 Fair,

  • for those unfamiliar, is to be a course-wide and campus-wide exhibition,

  • if not celebration of students' final projects in the course.

  • In a nutshell, for CS50, our undergraduate course

  • in computer science, students can implement most

  • any software-based project of interest to them at the end of the semester.

  • And the goal of the CS50 Fair was to provide a vehicle

  • at the end of the semester for students to present

  • their work to classmates, to staff, and to students, faculty, and staff

  • from across campus.

  • So yes, I worked with one of our earliest assistant head

  • teaching fellows, Yuki Yamashita, who was a junior or senior at the time.

  • And he and I pretty much spent winter break

  • over the phone and email planning the very first CS50 Fair.

  • At the time, Harvard's exams were after the break,

  • so the very first CS50 Fair was actually in January,

  • not in December, which it now is, when the course was closer to concluding.

  • And we pretty much knew the dimensions of the space--

  • the basement space of Northwest Science, big concrete floor and pillars--

  • and we knew the distance between all of those pillars.

  • And so we essentially came up with all of these estimations and models

  • using Photoshop or some other such tool to mock up the space.

  • And we knew we wanted bar-height tables.

  • We wanted students, and staff, and faculty to be able to walk by

  • and not have people seated or crouching over.

  • We got just very simple tablecloths to cover everything to the floor.

  • And then we realized we wanted to decorate the space.

  • And the easiest way to decorate a space, especially with tall ceilings,

  • is just to put some balloons with helium on string.

  • And so that's what we did early on to adorn the space.

  • BRIAN YU: And how did you figure out where

  • to get enough tables to have 300 people present

  • their projects and enough balloons to fill an entire basement of a building?

  • It feels like there's a lot of just upfront logistics

  • to figure out in terms of how to make this work.

  • And now we can just rely on, oh, let's do what we do last year.

  • But the first time must have been much tougher.

  • DAVID MALAN: Yeah, no, we had to envision everything

  • off the top of our heads.

  • And when we-- I'm guessing we asked someone at the time,

  • hey, where can we get a 100 bar-height tables?

  • Well, Harvard doesn't have its own supply of those,

  • and so there's a local place that we ultimately had to rent them from.

  • The tablecloths as well.

  • We knew way too much about the per-unit cost of tablecloths and tables

  • at the time.

  • But we also, from that same vendor, for instance, got a few popcorn machines.

  • We wanted to make it kind of like a fair,

  • really, like a carnival of sorts, albeit academically oriented.

  • So we got two or three popcorn machines, the idea

  • being that the teaching fellows and the staff running the event

  • could pop some popcorn, and it would be a nice way to say hello to people

  • and greet them on the way in.

  • I think not the first year-- eventually, we

  • tried cotton candy machines, which is so much fun to make,

  • because you finally understand how it works by putting a little paper cone

  • 'round and 'round in the sugar.

  • But oh my god, what a mess it makes.

  • You don't really want free-flowing sugar in the air,

  • so we killed that after a while.

  • BRIAN YU: The popcorn machines aren't easy to use.

  • I remember struggling to figure out how to actually make popcorn in the popcorn

  • machine the very first time, because I'd never actually used

  • a popcorn machine before.

  • DAVID MALAN: Yeah, no.

  • There's the big carnival-style ones or that you'd get from a vendor

  • off the street.

  • So secretly, in recent years, we've started pre-buying the popcorn

  • in really big boxes--

  • BRIAN YU: [CHUCKLES] Makes things a lot easier.

  • DAVID MALAN: --just like the movie theaters do,

  • but we put it out on display in boxes.

  • But we actually really did very nitpickily think

  • about all of the low-level details.

  • We had-- even the popcorn boxes, we wanted to make sure that they were flat

  • and weren't just paper things, because we wanted students

  • to be able to put them down, and passersby put them down

  • while interacting with students' laptops.

  • I think we even had water machines, like dispensing water.

  • We deliberately got those conical cups that

  • come to a triangular point as opposed to flat bottom ones

  • because we wanted people literally to finish any water they had in their cup

  • so as to minimize the risk that someone was going to put a cup of water

  • down near a student's laptop and spill.

  • So we were even obsessing to that level of detail early on.

  • And while we didn't do this the first year,

  • we actually realized quickly that in such a large group of people,

  • the balloons that we first got for the first year or more of the fair

  • were latex.

  • And unfortunately, too many people are allergic to latex, potentially,

  • especially when you have hundreds of them floating around in the air.

  • So after one or more years, we switched to foil balloons,

  • Mylar balloons instead, which unfortunately are more expensive,

  • but they don't have the allergens.

  • BRIAN YU: Huh, that never would have ever crossed my mind.

  • Were there any other surprises, things you

  • weren't expecting that suddenly came up during the process of planning

  • and executing that very first fair?

  • DAVID MALAN: That was certainly one.

  • Not so many surprises, otherwise-- we eventually

  • realized that we don't need to worry too much about conical-shaped cups.

  • We eventually got flattened bottom cups.

  • And knock on wood, nothing bad has happened to any laptops with water.

  • No, I think we--

  • and Yuki was great at this event planning, and envisioning designs.

  • We introduced some very deliberate design decisions, like we had--

  • we wanted to invite some industry friends, and alumni,

  • and recruiters, really, from companies, popular tech companies that we

  • knew students might have an interest in working for over the summer

  • or full-time.

  • So we actually invited eight or so such folks from industry that year,

  • but we very deliberately put them at the back of the room.

  • One, we didn't want companies to be the focus of the event.

  • It was obviously supposed to be focused on the students,

  • and so a supermajority of the tables were indeed

  • allocated to students' laptops and their projects.

  • But we also very deliberately, when people came into this large space,

  • wanted to pull them through the whole space.

  • So even those upperclassmen, or say, juniors and seniors

  • who might be there primarily to look into job opportunities, but secondarily

  • wouldn't mind chatting with friends and seeing their projects and so forth.

  • We wanted to compel them to go through the space, see all of the projects

  • before they actually reached the table.

  • So we tried to think about details like that.

  • And then we did introduce the first year-- oh, yeah, this was unforeseen.

  • We got stress balls, which are just these squishy spherical things that

  • say CS50 on them, or CS50 stress ball, literally, nowadays.

  • And we wanted the TFs to hand them out as people came into this space,

  • and descended this beautiful staircase that leads into this space.

  • What we didn't expect was that the TFs would start throwing the stress

  • balls at attendees, which was actually kind of an issue,

  • because they don't hurt, and it's not a danger like that,

  • but when you're throwing the stress balls up a stairwell

  • and you don't necessarily have good aim, then

  • do the balls come back down thanks to gravity and knock things over.

  • So it's been hard to put downward pressure on that tradition,

  • but I think we finally killed it off.

  • BRIAN YU: Yeah, well, we've moved-- so Northwest was the original location.

  • That basement was the original location for the first fair.

  • And you stayed there for 10 years.

  • Is that right?

  • DAVID MALAN: Oh, let's call it--

  • 10 years.

  • Yeah, 10 years, and then two years now in a different place.

  • BRIAN YU: Yeah, and so this new location, how did that come about?

  • So we just-- in the last two years, switched

  • to holding the CS50 Fair in the Smith Center, this newly-renovated part

  • of Harvard's campus.

  • Did you know immediately that's where you wanted to move the fair to,

  • or how did that come about?

  • DAVID MALAN: Yeah.

  • So Harvard recently renovated a building that was once called the Holyoke Center

  • and is now called the Smith Center.

  • And it's more of a community space on campus.

  • They gutted the first couple of floors, enlarged the ceilings,

  • and made this beautiful big open space called Harvard Commons, which

  • is a glassed-in area that has chairs, and tables, and a little stage,

  • and just a lot of big open space.

  • And the best feature of it is that it's 100% central in Harvard Square, which

  • is the heart of the area right next to Harvard Yard,

  • and whereas Northwest Science was one of these buildings on campus

  • that really was on the periphery, so it's a destination.

  • Like, you have to intend to go to the CS50 Fair,

  • and therefore, there's that non-zero activation energy to just get

  • attendees to come chat with folks.

  • So the fact that it's now in Harvard Square

  • is great, because we have all the more passersby, even tourists,

  • people who are just poking their head in to see what goes on at a university,

  • and what our students have accomplished.

  • And the upside of that is that there's all the more

  • attendees to chat up our own students and ask

  • them to show off their projects.

  • So hopefully, it's a win-win for everyone.

  • BRIAN YU: Yeah, that sounds like a huge advantage.

  • Because Northwest-- if you're unfamiliar with the layout of Harvard's campus,

  • if you look at a map of Harvard's campus,

  • Northwest is in like the far corner of the campus.

  • And on some maps, it's just cut off altogether.

  • You can't even see it.

  • So it is-- you do have to journey a little bit in order to get there.

  • What did you do in the very first year before people

  • knew what the CS50 Fair was like to get faculty and other students to be

  • able to show up in order to talk to students about their projects?

  • DAVID MALAN: Yeah, a lot of hoping that very first year.

  • It was one of those things where--

  • I know it's kind of a dated reference now,

  • but if you ever saw the movie Field of Dreams with Kevin Costner,

  • there's a line in it.

  • If you build it, they will come, or he will come.

  • And we sort of likened--

  • I liken this to this experience, where we were putting together

  • this pretty large-scale event for 300-plus students,

  • and we hoped, hoped, hoped, hoped that people would actually come.

  • So spoiler, they did, and it's wonderful,

  • and we've done 11 more since then.

  • But there was just a lot of straightforward publicity

  • with postering on campus, and emails, and word of mouth,

  • encouraging students to invite people they knew.

  • But we also introduced a couple of other elements.

  • And this, I do think, was a very last-minute decision.

  • And I don't recall where it came from, but we decided--

  • starting with the very first CS50 Fair-- to have a raffle, as you know now,

  • where we would give every attendee a printed program, a brochure

  • that explained the event and had a map of the space and a few other things.

  • But it also had like 10 or 12 spots for smiley face stickers

  • that were initially blank.

  • And we then gave to all of the students presenting their work

  • 10 or 12 smiley face stickers.

  • And the instructions to attendees were, for any student

  • who you chat up and ask them about their project, like hey, what did you do,

  • or hey, can I see a demo, the student was then

  • authorized to give you a smiley face sticker for your printed program, which

  • took the dual role of a raffle card.

  • So if you chatted with as many as 10 or 12 students

  • over the course of the fair, you could accumulate up to 10 or 12 stickers,

  • each one of which represented, indeed, an entry

  • into a raffle with fabulous prizes.

  • And they were kind of fabulous.

  • We did procure and had donated to us for students things like an Xbox,

  • and a Wii, and all the fun toys that--

  • especially electronic-- that people might like these days.

  • But it was just another way of trying to get attendees to come, ultimately

  • for the projects, and for the students in the class,

  • but also help grease the social friction to give them yet another reason

  • to come see their friend or roommate.

  • Heck, you could win an Xbox along the way.

  • BRIAN YU: I think that's been a great part of the fair,

  • because it just means that constantly-- so anyone who's there at the fair

  • is talking to people, and is asking people questions,

  • and it really always feels like people are engaged, and curious,

  • and they're talking.

  • [INAUDIBLE] a little bit of that extra impetus to do so.

  • DAVID MALAN: Yeah.

  • Hopefully it just breaks the ice, right?

  • Because you would like to think that every attendee would be comfortable

  • coming up to you and say, hey, Brian, what did you do for your project?

  • But if you can kind of couch it in like, hey, Brian,

  • what did you do for your project, when you're really there for the sticker,

  • but you would certainly benefit from and enjoy hearing about something neat

  • that the student worked on, it kind of helps break the social ice, we hope.

  • And so we've kept it for now 12 years, 12 stickers.

  • BRIAN YU: So you now, over 12 fairs, have

  • talked to a lot of students about a lot of projects.

  • Any that particularly stand out to you?

  • Any really memorable projects that you remember from past fairs?

  • DAVID MALAN: There are, and this is hands down one

  • of the biggest FAQs of CS50 itself.

  • The official answer is that I love them all equally, as you know.

  • And honestly, it's hard to even have favorites.

  • Because we have so many students-- like 800 this most recent semester--

  • you see so many projects, and there's such a range.

  • I really don't tend to have favorites.

  • The ones that do stick in my mind often, only because they

  • are different from a lot of the projects,

  • is anyone that integrates some piece of hardware with their project,

  • or any kind of tool or technology that we didn't teach in the class.

  • And this is characteristic of a lot of students' projects.

  • Some projects are absolutely inspired by things like CS50 finance problem

  • set, where you build a stock trading website,

  • so you can see elements of Bootstrap, and Flask, and SQLite,

  • and these elements that students use in the course's problem

  • sets that they then use in their final project.

  • And that is totally the point of the final project--

  • to take the new-found knowledge of programming

  • up for a spin and design something of their own.

  • But I'm always so impressed and amazed how many students

  • and how many projects implement something that we did not taught them.

  • And I've come to realize, this is the biggest compliment, I think,

  • as just being part of the class and its instruction, that students now

  • are so empowered as to not just apply lessons learned in the class

  • explicitly, but to go off on their own and feel sufficiently

  • comfortable and sufficiently capable of figuring out

  • some new tool, or some library, or some language,

  • and then applying it to a project of their own.

  • That is by far the coolest thing.

  • And it makes me think and hope that we're

  • doing something right that so many students are

  • able to do that after only three months of a CS course, their first ever.

  • BRIAN YU: Yeah, it's always amazing to just see that delta of students

  • at the beginning of the class having not ever written a line of code,

  • and just making Mario's pyramid appear with one or two or three or four rows,

  • and then just a couple months later, they're

  • building all sorts of really interesting and cool stuff.

  • DAVID MALAN: Yeah, no, I mean it.

  • At the end of the semester, I usually send a congratulatory email of sorts

  • to all students.

  • And I encourage them to think back on how, some 12 weeks prior, mario.c

  • was hard, where we asked them in that problem set just a printer

  • a hierarchical pyramid of hashtags on the screen.

  • And it is hard, certainly if it's your first time programming

  • with C, let alone any language.

  • But my god, they come so far by the end of the semester

  • to be building their own web-based database-backed application, that's

  • a pretty remarkable thing.

  • BRIAN YU: Yeah.

  • And one nice thing about just the ability to showcase these projects

  • is not only are they showcasing them now to other students and other attendees

  • at the fair, but because of what the production team has now done,

  • there's also now this live stream in recent years

  • where students can showcase their projects to the world,

  • and people are interviewing them and asking them questions,

  • and anyone online can go and see what projects people are doing.

  • How long has that been around, and what's the process for that like?

  • DAVID MALAN: Oh, that's a really good question.

  • We've certainly been capturing on video and camera, still shots,

  • memories of the fair from early on.

  • But in the past, let's say three or four years, maybe, have we indeed

  • started live streaming the whole event and turning it

  • into something akin to the Olympics, where

  • you have roaming reporters interviewing the athletes,

  • and in our case, the computer scientists about their project on the floor.

  • And sort of multiplexing, toggling among all of the different cameras and views.

  • It's typically hosted by one or more members of the staff.

  • Colton Ogden, Veronica Nutting, this most recent year,

  • and last year as well, who kind of anchor the whole show.

  • And it's such fun to flip through and watch

  • so many different angles of the fair that you missed at the time.

  • We're talking an event now that draws, amazingly, some 2,000-plus attendees,

  • typically, every year, not to mention our own students presenting

  • their projects.

  • So even you as a human attendee at this event

  • only barely scratch the surface of everything that's going on,

  • and all the projects that are there, and the conversations and demos.

  • So being able to re-experience it on video,

  • or to be able to experience it at all virtually

  • from wherever you are in the world via the live streams on YouTube

  • and Facebook and the like is really such a fun thing.

  • And it just gets prettier, and better, and more and more

  • interactive thanks to CS50's amazing team.

  • But it really is the student's interviews

  • on these, and the demos on their screens that really pop.

  • And actually, one thing we did start doing a few years

  • prior to that was that we're expecting of students, when they submit

  • their final projects, not just their code and their documentation

  • and so forth, but also a two- to five-minute video

  • that we asked them to upload unlistedly to YouTube so that we then

  • have a visual demonstration.

  • And we ask students, of course, if they want to opt

  • into allowing us to share these online.

  • So usually, most students allow us to publish them in a gallery of sorts

  • online too.

  • And that's been fun too to build up all the more

  • of this repository of now hundreds-- thousands, really--

  • of students' final projects.

  • BRIAN YU: Yeah, that's always great to see, especially

  • because the fair is relatively short.

  • It's a couple of hours long, and so there's

  • no way you'd be able to have a complete conversation with 800-plus students

  • that are all presenting their projects during it.

  • So I always go back, and I look at the video,

  • and sometimes there's a project that's like, oh, wow, I

  • wish I had been able to go see that one in more detail,

  • because there are just so many cool and interesting things that

  • are happening there.

  • DAVID MALAN: Though I feel, on behalf of our production team,

  • I should emphasize it's not really couple of hours.

  • It's been at least four hours most years,

  • and some years it's probably been five or more.

  • But that too has been a design detail that we've had

  • to figure out experimentally over time.

  • Even the first one was probably three or four hours but broken into shifts.

  • I think we probably had students presenting in groups of roughly 100

  • out of the 287 students, and presenting for about 90 minutes at a time.

  • And we've changed that number.

  • Sometimes it's 90 minutes.

  • Sometimes it's been 80, or 60 minutes, or 75.

  • At Yale, too, we played with these numbers really based

  • on the hours during which we want to run the event and the total numbers

  • of students.

  • But that helps us accommodate even more students,

  • because we can't have 800 students all at once,

  • and I'm not sure we would want to have everyone there at once.

  • You want attendees not presenting their projects to chat up those presenting.

  • So playing with those numbers has helped as well.

  • And there too, like even fine-tuning things.

  • We've sometimes started at 11:00 AM, or noon,

  • but of course, then you clobber lunch.

  • We've ended at like 4:30, or 4:00 PM, and then people

  • start to check out at the end of the day.

  • So we're trying to find the sweet spot, and it's something

  • in the range of 11:00 to 4:00 seems to be best,

  • if not wrapping a little earlier.

  • We get critical mass.

  • BRIAN YU: And you mentioned Yale as well.

  • So CS50 has been at Yale now for--

  • I think this is just its fifth year at Yale that CS50's been offered there,

  • and we had a fair every single year.

  • How has the organizing the fair there been different?

  • Because it's been interesting to see how we've taken the fair,

  • which used to just exist for this course, and now Yale does it.

  • And then [INAUDIBLE] CS50 teachers who are teaching CS50 AP, like high school

  • versions of the class, that have had their own fairs

  • at their own high schools with their high school students

  • all presenting their projects to other students, and other teachers,

  • and members of their communities.

  • So what does that look like, and what goes into making

  • another fair other than our own?

  • DAVID MALAN: Yeah, really good question.

  • Fortunately, we essentially had a playbook for Yale

  • in that we knew how to run a fair and what knobs we could turn.

  • So it was mostly execution of that kind of template, thanks to Jason Hirschhorn

  • early on with our very first fair in a building at Yale

  • called Commons, which is this beautiful space even grander

  • than Harvard's Annenberg Hall where students would take meals.

  • Very Harry Potter-like, if you're familiar with Hogwarts.

  • So we use that space and set up tables.

  • The tables were not bar height there because we

  • had these old school beautiful wooden tables that were normal height,

  • and we felt, OK, reasonable compromise.

  • Not everything needs to be exactly the same.

  • We don't need to go rent tables when we have tables here.

  • But we similarly invited some alumni, and recruiters, and industry friends

  • to table for students there too.

  • Because of various dining constraints there,

  • we haven't typically had the same food.

  • Instead of popcorn and cotton candy in recent years,

  • we have cookies instead, so the cuisine is a little different than New

  • Haven than Cambridge.

  • But for the most part, the structure of the event is pretty much the same.

  • And in fact, we bring a photo booth to Yale,

  • just like we have here, to allow students to take memories home

  • with them.

  • And at the end of the day, the most important detail

  • is just that the students are there, and that there's

  • someone for them to chat with.

  • And so one thing that has worked out well in recent years--

  • both in Cambridge at Harvard and in New Haven at Yale--

  • is we've started inviting CS50's high school audience, a.k.a.

  • CS50 AP.

  • So both at Harvard and Yale do we have a few busloads

  • of high school or middle school students coming

  • on field trips with their teachers and parents

  • to come see our undergraduates' final projects.

  • And that's been great too, because it literally increases significantly

  • the number of people who are there to chat up our own students.

  • The younger students are often quite interested in what

  • they might do in college, let alone in a place like Harvard or Yale.

  • So it's just all the better, we hope, for our own students,

  • who then have all the more of a genuine interest among passersby

  • in their projects.

  • BRIAN YU: Yeah, and some of the high school students recently--

  • I remember in this most recent CS50 Fair at Yale,

  • some of the high school students had projects of their own

  • that they were showing off and talking to people about.

  • And it was really cool to see the kinds of stuff that they were doing.

  • I unfortunately never got to see the Yale fair at the Commons, which

  • sounds like a beautiful space.

  • The first Yale fair that I remember--

  • I forget which year it was-- was at like a museum or something.

  • And I remember the photobooth had dinosaurs in the background,

  • and we were walking through these museum exhibits and seeing projects.

  • And that was a fun space, just something a little bit different--

  • DAVID MALAN: It was very weird, though.

  • BRIAN YU: Yeah, it was different.

  • DAVID MALAN: This was their museum of natural history,

  • and there really were literal dinosaur bones in the photographs

  • with the laptops and YouTube videos.

  • And it was this weird collision of worlds between thousands

  • of years ago and modernity now, so.

  • But it was a beautiful space, so that worked out well.

  • However, not unlike Northwest Science at Harvard, that building-- the museum

  • was pretty far off campus.

  • So we've used the library.

  • We've used another event space on campus.

  • But we're hoping this fall that Commons will reopen.

  • It's been undergoing renovations for a few years.

  • Don't know what it's going to look like yet on the inside.

  • But we're hoping we can return to a grander space,

  • especially now that we have some 200-plus students at Yale,

  • so we kind of need the room to grow.

  • But as you say, even more amazing, besides New Haven and Cambridge alike,

  • some of our communities online.

  • CS50x, so to speak, has been building up their own CS50 fairs,

  • sometimes with advice and direction from us,

  • but even more often, they're just inspired by the photographs

  • that we've been posting from CS50 Fairs at Harvard and Yale.

  • So most recently did some of our friends and students in Iraq

  • have their own CS50x Iraq fair, I think the first ever.

  • And they even duplicated down to the level

  • of detail of getting the same emoji balloons that we had here in Cambridge

  • that we have flying in the space.

  • So it was fascinating seeing this parallel world

  • where students, who were similarly proud of and had accomplished

  • their final projects, were showing them off in a space very similar to ours,

  • with balloons very similar to ours, with popcorn very similar to ours.

  • And it was quite flattering, and just remarkable

  • to see what the students there who were running this did with that vision

  • and made it their own.

  • BRIAN YU: Yeah, I remember you sharing some of the photos

  • from that fair with me, and I remember looking at some of the photos,

  • and for a split second, almost thinking it

  • was our fair, because you see a bunch of tables and a bunch of emoji balloons.

  • I'm like, I've never seen that anywhere else other than CS50 Fair.

  • DAVID MALAN: Yeah, for sure.

  • But I should emphasize too, balloons are relatively easy to procure,

  • though the helium element isn't ideal, but of course, that's

  • what helps it fill the space literally, vertically.

  • But the origins of the fair itself, I should emphasize, really

  • were much, much more modest.

  • 2007 of CS50, there was no fair.

  • And there was instead more traditional final project presentations.

  • So before your time, we had that year some 200, 300 students as well.

  • And in fact, it might have been 287 that first year,

  • and then like 332 the second year, but same order of magnitude.

  • And we had reserved a whole bunch of small rooms on campus,

  • and all of our teaching fellows, or TFs, would

  • lead their sections or recitations of 10 to 20 students

  • through a tour of everyone's final project.

  • So you, if you were a student, would stand up for maybe five minutes

  • and present your final project, then the next student, then the next student.

  • And I as the instructor that year tried to bounce around these rooms

  • as best I could, but I physically and temporally could not

  • visit all of the rooms.

  • And even the students and the TFs who were there,

  • I don't think they were all very inspired.

  • It was kind of boring.

  • It was kind of a rote requirement that you be there, listen to your classmates

  • present their final project.

  • Ans while I'm sure there was some inspiration, there was no uptempo.

  • There was no inspiration.

  • There was no casual chitchat.

  • It really was formal.

  • And so that's what we tore down in 2008.

  • We got rid of what no one really wanted to do-- everyone was really just going

  • through these motions to present their final project--

  • and tried to turn it into something fun.

  • I myself never tended a middle school science fair,

  • but we turned it into what I assumed a middle school science fair was like,

  • with everyone presenting their work at some sort,

  • and we definitely added our own elements.

  • But that was the motivation.

  • But we beta tested the CS50 Fair in some form at Harvard Extension School.

  • So I, and now you, have been teaching at Harvard Extension School for some time,

  • our Continuing Ed program.

  • And for a couple of our software-based classes that also culminated in final

  • projects, we introduced a mini CS50 Fair very early on--

  • I believe before our 2008 CS50 Fair--

  • that just brought the students together, those who were local to Cambridge,

  • in a small room on campus.

  • But we didn't do it with formal presentations, like in 2007.

  • We instead went to CVS, local convenience store and pharmacy,

  • picked up some Entenmann's cake, which are

  • these boxed-up cakes that you can get in some supermarkets and some convenience

  • stores.

  • And we got some plastic knives, and I think we got milk.

  • We got some cups with milk for some delicious chocolate cake.

  • And just turned on some music.

  • And we laid out the tables, got rid of the chairs,

  • and just invited the students-- our extension students those terms--

  • to come in, set up their laptops with power cords, wherever,

  • and just kind of roam about a room.

  • And honestly, that had a different vibe to be sure.

  • Much smaller scale, but no less proud, and no less accomplished.

  • Just bringing people together more casually

  • to delight in what they've done and what each other had done

  • is all it really takes.

  • So truly, the lower bound here for a very successful CS50-like Fair

  • is just some Entenmann's cakes.

  • I don't think you even need the milk, because we've nixed that since.

  • And some music too, I think, to fill in the gaps

  • and grease the social context with some music is a good thing too.

  • Uptempo, not something somber.

  • BRIAN YU: So yeah, I was about to ask about that, the music.

  • Who picks the playlist?

  • I've always wondered about that.

  • So I know there is like a CS50 Fair playlist,

  • and someone presses play on that playlist.

  • Where'd all those songs come from?

  • DAVID MALAN: Yeah, so a friend of mine who gives me haircuts

  • actually had, in his own salon many years ago,

  • some really cool uptempo hip fashion-like music playing.

  • And I think this was before the days of Shazam,

  • so I couldn't just take out my phone and figure out what it was.

  • So I asked him what it was.

  • And he and his husband kindly put together a mix CD of music

  • that we then played in MP3 format or something

  • like that at the first CS50 Fair.

  • And what was characteristic of it was that it was

  • music that didn't really have lyrics.

  • It was mostly just sounds and a lot of uptempo beats

  • that really was conducive to keeping the blood pumping,

  • and the conversations going, and just keeping the energy level up.

  • And so for a couple of years, I think we used those soundtracks.

  • I think sometime after that, I was at a conference or an event--

  • Google I/O, I think, which is Google's annual input output

  • conference for techies.

  • And they had played really cool music that one year when

  • everyone would come up onto the stage.

  • And so I actually went and chatted with the AV technicians,

  • figured out who their DJ was, and he kindly

  • sent me a copy of the very music they had used for their own conference.

  • So we used that music for a year or two since.

  • Since then, Spotify came into existence, and so did

  • Colton Ogden, formerly of this podcast.

  • And he would DJ and pick songs out from Spotify.

  • And most recently, this year, I think I--

  • I always describe the kind of music that I

  • like for the event as fashion show music, or the kind of music

  • you'd see in a cool clothing store, really, and that's just playing

  • and you feel like you're in a cool place.

  • So I think I literally just searched on Spotify this year

  • for fashion show music.

  • And sure enough, there's this massive playlist that you could use.

  • So that's what we used--

  • BRIAN YU: There's Spotify playlists for just about anything.

  • You search up any occasion, any genre, any mood you want,

  • and there's a Spotify playlist that someone's compiled for you.

  • DAVID MALAN: Yeah, and you know, because we've shared with our own CS50

  • account some of our own playlists, you can probably search for CS50 Fair music

  • and even find an answer to that question now too, though of course, someone

  • needs to put it there, so.

  • BRIAN YU: Yeah, that's good to know.

  • And I really do think the music does have

  • the effect of keeping the energy up and really encouraging these conversations.

  • And I think that's the distinguishing feature

  • of the CS50 Fair from the 2007-style presentations you were talking about.

  • This is just much more conversational.

  • It's all about just getting students to talk about their projects

  • with other people that are interested in it,

  • and having the opportunity to share that,

  • and talk about the work they've done in just a semester of time in the class.

  • DAVID MALAN: Yeah, yeah, it really isn't a resource question

  • to this day with our Extension School courses,

  • which are smaller scale in terms of numbers of students.

  • We still just pick up some Entenmann's cakes, like literally ,

  • from CVS or the like, and get people together with some nice music, no milk,

  • but just some tables and invite students to bring their laptops.

  • And those are just as successful, so it really

  • doesn't take all of the balloons and spectacle.

  • It really just takes the people, at the end of the day.

  • And again, making it more of a community social inspirational event,

  • and not a presentational event, I think is the key distinction.

  • BRIAN YU: Yeah, I think that's worked really well,

  • and it's been a lot of fun for me as a staff member,

  • and I think for students as well, just to be

  • a part of that kind of experience, because it's definitely

  • a memorable one.

  • DAVID MALAN: That, then, is the CS50 Fair, and this was the CS50 podcast.

  • My name is David Malan.

  • BRIAN YU: My name is Brian Yu.

  • DAVID MALAN: And if you'd like to reach out

  • with any suggestions or requests for future podcast episodes,

  • do as always email us at podcast@cs50.harvard.edu.

  • BRIAN YU: Talk to you next time.

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