Choosing Projects:

One of the hardest things that I have encountered while trying to pick my top 5 projects for the semester long project is finding a balance among many of the following themes: plausibility, interest, societal impact, and potential team members

Plausibility:

In the context of this class, plausibility is the likelihood that the project is something that can actually be done given the time constraints. Taking my work load in other classes into consideration, I have found, has greatly impacted which projects I find myself wanting to choose. On the one hand, there are really interesting and potentially fun proposals, however, these proposals appear to be quite involved and may run the risk of being so hard that 11 weeks just isn't enough time to actually have a polished application at the end of the semester. This is unfortunate as many of the project that are interesting also appear to be out of scope. It is something that is really hard to judge because it isn't completely clear how much of the technology is already out there and may just need to be retrofitted in order to create a useful and interesting application.

Interest:

This category seems to pretty much be going hand-in-hand with the Plausibility aspect of many of the projects. I have found that many of the interesting projects that I can see myself wanting to spend hours hacking away at, are also the projects that have potentially much lower chances for success. This is kind of a bummer because honestly, who wants to do something boring? Hopefully NO ONE!!!

Societal Impact:

This aspect is also important simply because it doesn't make sense to work on something that is just going to get thrown away right after the semester ends; what a waste of time! Fortunately, many of the projects that had a fair balance between my interest in them and my perceived plausibility of them also seemed like they had the potential of actually being useful beyond their creation in this class. Of course some of the easier or less original projects didn't seem to have as much potential but that goes without saying I suppose.

Potential Team Members:

This is probably one of the most important dimensions that I find myself taking into consideration when deciding what my top 5 will be. This is simply because, although I am a fairly patient person, I do have my limits like anyone else. Image having to work on even the simplest of projects with a dysfunctional team; not my idea of fun! I wouldn't even mind doing one of the harder projects as long as everyone on the team, at least some some degree, was able to compromise and could get along. This is also probably the hardest to judge for at least two reasons: the first is that I don't really know what projects the people I want on my team will pick or in what order (not to say that we haven't been trying to game the system,) , and second, even if we all chose the same projects, there is no guarantee that other people I DON'T want on my team will somehow have overlapping preferences and I may get stuck with them. This has definitely been one of the hardest things to take into account when choosing my preferences.

This project, like any project worth doing, requires a fine balance between many things and I have only touched on some of the things that I have been taking into account while choosing my preference list for the projects.