An essential skill of a good researcher (whether in networking or not) is to see the "big-picture": to understand how their ongoing research problem fits in the puzzle of current industry and world events. This skill is critical if you want to work on "relevant" research problems.
This course intends to help students develop this skill. For this, each lecture will start with a summary of today's industry and world news that might, should, or do affect computer networking research. The instructor will present this summary during the first few lectures to serve as example.
It is important that the current industry and world events perused are of general interest. They should not be news that cater to a specific community, such as Slashdot. Instead they should be aimed at a general audience. Otherwise you want the risk of making your research relevant only to people who read Slashdot. We will restrict the news to only two sources: the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.
At the beginning of a lecture, one student will present one slide with three bullets only. The presentation is limited to five minutes only. Each bullet lists the headline of a piece of news whose, in the student's opinion, affects computer networking research. The student needs to orally present a summary of the news and their argument as to why the news are relevant. The news should all be from that day's newspaper and the student should bring one physical copy of the newspaper (either the New York Times, or the Wall Street Journal, or both).
After the lecture, the student will send an e-mail with a writeup of their summary. The writeup should only have three paragraphs (one for each bullet on the slide). Each paragraph should not have more than five sentences. These writeups will be posted on the course's webpage.