Understanding the Milky Way
In this talk I will briefly cover the scientific rational of why we want to study the Milky Way as a galaxy and how the data from Gaia and current and future groundbased spectroscopic surveys are a key element. I will then spend the majority of the talk covering a set of issues that the surveys are faced with; in particular issues related to the analysis of the stellar spectra and how they might impact our interpretation of the data and hence our understanding of the Milky Way. I will end with the description of our study of microlensed dwarf stars in the Galactic bulge. A project that shows how you can circumnavigate some of the issues by taking advantage of the natural magnification phenomena occuring in our Galaxy.