1. Large survey operations
Lessons from GALAH

2. Survey principles Get obsessed Communicate Trust your experts Automate
Consolidate
Remember your goal

3. 1: Get obsessed
To get the details right, there needs to be someone looking after them
Within a Working Group, before starting
Lots of design/strategy discussion: what’s the best way to do this?
Cross-section of expertise/research style
Across the team, several times
Have people from outside the Working Group check in periodically: why are we doing it that way, could we do this too?

4. 2: Communicate No one* likes mailing lists and phonecons
Eat your vegetables: the project will go so much better when it’s well aligned
This is especially important if you follow my next point
*If you find someone who does, put them in charge of this immediately

5. 3: Trust your experts
A large project will need multiple areas of expertise
From instrument interface to data analysis
A top-down structure can be more stress than it’s worth
Especially when people don’t work for you
A flatter structure has a central person who knows a little bit of everything and keeps things moving

6. 4: Automate Interactive data work doesn’t scale
Processes will be refined over time
You will redo everything multiple times
Automation will be the default for FunnelWeb
Make sure the right information is being collected

7. 5: Consolidate Data transfers are a huge waste of time
Of course, keep archives in multiple places
But do as much of the processing and analysis as possible in one place
Do software in one language as much as possible, use github (or similar) to collaborate
Key software isn’t held by one person

8. 6: Stay on target The purpose of the project is to do science
Taking data is not science
Even if it’s a lot of data
Get the data that will answer the questions that motivated the project
Give the experts time away from technical things so they can do science

9. Survey principles Get obsessed Communicate Trust your experts Automate
Consolidate
Stay on target