  These are slides for a talk given by the authors at the conference "Current
developments and directions in the Langlands program" held in honor of Robert
Langlands at the Northwestern University in May of 2008. The slides can be used
as a short introduction to the theory of characters and character sheaves for
unipotent groups in positive characteristic, developed by the authors in a
series of articles written between 2006 and 2011. We give an overview of the
main results of this theory along with a bit of motivation.
