Welcome!

Welcome to our group! Here are some useful tips for you to get started at our chair if you just joined us as a HiWi, Diploma or Master thesis student.

Who to talk to

The first person to talk to if you have any questions is always the doctoral candidate ("Assistant") that you work with.

Clarissa, our administrator, will help you with your contract if you are a HiWi, and is the right person to talk to about all things financial, such as getting back money for small parts you purchased for your work. Please talk to her each time before you spend any money that you plan to get back from our chair.

Jonathan is responsible for technical administration. He can help you if you are having problems with our computers - before keeping him from work take a look on Eric's admin FAQ. There you can find out who else will care for you if you have problems with the wiki or wish to use some special equipment from our chair. If something in the lab or Hiwi rooms isn't working as it should, don't just grumble, but let the responsible person (-> admin FAQ) know so they can fix it.

Should you ever encounter any problems or questions that you cannot resolve with your doctoral assistant, contact Jan directly. Email him the facts and problems, and talk to him in person to confirm he received your message (spam filters can be cruel). Don't wait until you have lost months of your time because of something.

What to do to get started

• Get an account for our machines from Jonathan. His office hours are Mon-Thu in Room 2213. Then you will have access to the computers in the Hiwi Room (2214) and the Lab.
• Put yourself at your earliest convenience on the media mailing list and the hci mailing list. They are pretty low traffic: the first is the group's internal list while the second is used for general announcements.
• Work with your doctoral candidate or Jonathan to create a home page for you under the people page and to activate your account for our home page (hci.rwth-aachen.de) and give you privileges of the group i10 so you can edit any page and have access to the "secret" sections.
• Put a picture of yourself, a two-paragraph description of what you are doing and a link to your tutor on your personal page. More details here: wikiguide
• Give Clarissa your home address and home/cell phone numbers so we can reach you if necessary.
• We use iChat a lot for communication (because we're lazy and don't like to walk ), so if you don't have one already, please sign up for a free .Mac trial account. You will keep your name@mac.com iChat address even after it expires. iChat is also compatible with AIM. You can get everyone else's IDs from aim. Add your own iChat/AIM, ICQ, and cell phone number to this list, and enter those cell phone numbers you may need into your cell phone. (This solution is no longer available to you if you do not own a credit card. Get an @mac.com iChat address from here instead)
• After receiving your account from Jonathan, also insert your contact information into the list here
• Sign up as an online member at the Apple Developer Connection. It's free. Otherwise we cannot let you access our servers, some of which may contain confidential Developer Documentation that we receive from Apple.
• Skim the Guides section on our internal pages for basic information about printing, scanning, making phone calls, etc.
• Please read the hardware purchase guide if you need to buy things to get your work done.
• In case your task is to write a program, read the i10 coding guidelines before you start.
• Write a welcome email to and introduce yourself to the group. Write about yourself, who you are going to work with and on what.

When to be where

• Come to the Tuesday i10 lunch at noon; we are taking turns in ordering the food so check your email inbox that morning from whoever is ordering that week (you did subscribe to our mailing list, right?). See the list of food-bringers for details.
• Come to the Thursday Club i10 at 13:00, our weekly group meeting where you can catch trip reports (e.g., from CHI) and conference practice talks from our PhD students, where you can meet interesting guests visiting our chair, and where we discuss plans and projects in general.
• Our group calendar is available from Google (click the button below). See the Guides page to view the calendar from iCal.
• Put your presence hours in which you are available at our lab into our Hiwi calendar. This helps you and your advisor plan your meetings, and you can see who else is around when to meet or to look for free hours in the Hiwi room.

Additional Stuff

• Check out our custom i10 software utilities to quickly check today's Mensa menu, type umlauts on a U.S. keyboard, etc.
• Get a T-Shirt (ask Jonathan)
• Please use the official logo and other merchandise, located under oliver/Public/Public Relations
• If you need any expensive hardware for your work (laptops, cameras, etc.) please consult with your tutor (advising PhD) student first, make a plan of what you need and how long you need it, test it (if possible), and then send Jonathan an email CCing your tutor with a summary of the information.
• If you find any broken or missing equipment, please email Jonathan. Don't leave it for the next person to discover. You do not have to pay for equipment you break as part of your job, so don't worry.

Emergency Information

Please remember these simple but possibly life-saving four facts:

• Jonathan is our trained first aid guy - if you find someone who, say, went into shock after waking a Mac from sleep to find Windows running on it, and you don't know what to do, get him.
• Malte is his replacement when Jonathan's not available.
• A green first-aid box is on the shelves in the kitchen.
• For heart attacks, a new defibrillator is downstairs in the main foyer near the Hausmeister's office. He also knows how to use it, but it's designed to be usable by anybody (it checks ECG heart activity automatically before applying shock).

Apart from that, have fun, and remember the Secret Motto:

And We Get Paid For This!

- Jan

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