Discussion with Geoffrey Lake

This past Sunday, I had a 30 min conversation with Geoffrey Lake picking his brain about how he managed his Best New Entry Team at University of Colorado Boulder.  After giving me a much better idea of what we were getting into in terms of cost and organization, he emphasized  three things:

1. Perfection is the Enemy of Good Enough
2. Love your project, it’ll show and motivate others
3. and KISS – keep it simple stupid

On a more technical side, he gave us tips on seals, design, and software.

I have to say he was extremely helpful and nice, willing to answer questions and offered to let us contact him with  any other questions.  Thanks Geoffrey!!

Getting started

So in the past two days, we have had meetings with Dov Kruger, PhD student writing code for underwater navigation, and Michael DeLorme, Research Engineer at Davidson Labs. We now have some direction to go in order to impress the Dean, get funding, and gather a qualified team. After looking more at Boulders website, it seems like they broke it down into these specialties

• Navigation, Mission strategy
• Controls, Motion Control System
• Electronics, Hydrophones, IRU
• Safety Engineer, Test Engineer
• Software, Webmaster, Image Recognition
• Project Manager, System Engineer, Financial Officer
• Structures, Sealing, Fabrication

University of Colorado

Today, after a meeting with Micheal DeLorme, I contacted the team leader of the team at University of Colorado Boulder. Their “best new entry” project was headed by a student named Geofrey Lake, who i must say did an extrodinary job for a first stab. Considering that as a team we are trying to emulate them (and as a team leader, Geofrey), we are hoping to hear back from them soon to get some pointers.

UPDATE – Geofrey replied to my email extremely quickly and was very willing to help. We are scheduled to talk this weekend, hopefully the discussion will shed light on a path!!