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title: Team BLISS retrospective - July 4th 2023

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Imagine you are travelling. You are at the station, waiting for your train.
- Where is your train going? (Goal of your work/project)

Barbara: A multilingual country, Conversistan
Carsten:    Legoland
Ji: Bath, England

Unfortunately, your train is delayed.
- What is causing the delay of your train? (What is disrupting the work)
- How much delay are you experiencing? (How bad is it)

Barbara: The tracks are not layed out correctly. They are mis-matched, and need to be reassembled. The delay is 2 hours, this is quite frustrating but we can overcome it.
Ji: Storm, like yesterday, or even worse, one night delay 
Carsten: tracks are overloaded due to signal error, several weeks of delay

As you are waiting for the delayed train, you hear the announcer's voice over the platform.
- What are they saying? How are they framing the delay?
- Do they offer an alternative? (What options do you have to deal with the disruption)

Barbara: "Technical difficulties causing a delay on the line to Conversistan. Please stay tuned for more information. Avid puzzlers may join the technical team in the control room A34, to help resolve the problem."

Ji: The staff there said that the train will not go forward anymore due to a serious storm weather, but they don't say anything about an alternative until I went to ask.

Carsten: "This is part of a journey, please try to comfort yourself. If you find an alternative route, feel free to use it."



Think a bit more about the destination you are heading towards.
- What famous sites will you be seeing there? (Known milestones)
Barbara: Many different conversations in many different languages. They can be looked at and compared together.

Ji: Spa hotels? 

Carsten: Miniature copies of all monuments in the world.

- Will you be looking for new and exciting experiences? (New things worth trying)

Barbara: Using clustering algorithms to group different conversations/sounds

Ji: Spa hotels definitely!

Carsten: I would like to build a new Lego monument that combines parts of all other monuments.

- Does the travel guide warn you about specific risks in the area? (Potential pitfalls)

Barbara: Very little danger. Most places are well-explored. Just a few dodgy places that offer the algorithmic clustering experience, you have to choose wisely.

Ji: Not at all, since I just made my mind of going there before buying the train ticket, and I know nearly nothing about potential risks there.

Carsten: The very long lines can be annoying, and once you get in everything might have changed.


You are of course not travelling alone.
- Who is joining you on this trip? (Can be team members, colleagues, or even hypothetical people!)
- What is in their suitcase that you most appreciate? (Skill, advice, tool they wrote...)

Barbara: Team BLISS is of course there. 
- Eva brought a huge stack of books, from dictionaries to reference manuals and a magical wand
- Carsten brought a rubiks cube (and a lot of puzzles)
- Ji brought his towel 🙃 
- Maurice brought a map

Ji: My room mate and he doesn't have anything but an MP3 in his suitcase. Maybe, if we will do another trip in the future, I hope he/me can bring some food/drink.

Carsten: members of Team Bliss, the NLP SIG, and the rest of the eScience Center step in and out along the way.
They bring various Lego pieces.


