It's probably not news that Friday is Launch Day. Project teams will meet their project liaisons and talk about their projects over lunch.

Launch Day events for Computer Science will be completely separate from Launch Day events for Engineering. CS teams will gather in the Los Angeles room of the University Student Union. Please arrive by 10:00am for sign-in etc.

I'd like you all to think about what you hope to accomplish this Friday. 

I can think of a number of things.

• You want to have some of your questions about your projects answered. You want to come away with a clearer picture of what your project entails.
   
• You want to get to know your liaison and begin to establish a good working relationship. You will be working with your liaison for the next 8 months. You will want your liaison to be supportive and encouraging -- i.e., to be on your side when difficulties arise. So be sure to do what you can to begin to build a bridge of trust and positive regard between the team and the liaison. You will want to establish a tentative plan for getting together, e.g., every week, every other week, whatever suits both you and the liaison.
   
• Among the things you can do are to
  • Give the liaison a sense of the overall competence of the team. Show the liaison both how well you work together as a team and what your individual strengths are. Help the liaison get to know each member of the team individually so that s/he can look back on the meeting and think: this person looks like this, is relatively quiet, but nonetheless makes contributions when s/he speaks, and is good in this technical area; this other person looks like this, is more of a leader, encourages the team to work together, is good in that technical area, etc.
     
  • Give the liaison the sense that you are responsible, that you take the project seriously and that you are committed to getting a good result. Establish in the liaison's mind a sense of your professionalism. Show your enthusiasm about the project.
     
  • Show the liaison that you are easy to work with. In particular listen to and echo back what the liaison says when s/he talks about his or her goals for the project.
      
  • Sketch out for the liaison a broad (written) timeline for the project. E.g., you will have a first draft of the full requirements document by Oct 15. You will have a basic prototype of the project for the liaison to see by Nov 15. You will discuss the completed requirements at a presentation at the end of the Fall semester. You will have an An Alpha version of the project by Feb 1, a Beta version by March 1, and a final version by April 1. You will show the world the completed project at Expo at the start of May. These dates are not fixed. They can always be changed with circumstances, but it will give the liaison a sense of your competence and seriousness and will help him or her build trust in the team if you have something like this to discuss.

Over the years we have found that most liaisons are nice people, want their teams to succeed, and are enjoyable to work with. They come with that as their underlying perspective. So in some sense your job is simply not to disappoint them.

Best wishes for Friday.