Here is some background in terms of their strategy in locating aliens and possibly detecting and sending messages:

“This is the biggest infusion of money for SETI since the NASA SETI program, which was terminated by Congress in 1993,” says Seth Shostak, the senior astronomer and director of the research division at the SETI Institute, one of the world’s most prominent centers for SETI research, nestled in California’s Silicon Valley. “So, of course this is a major boost to the search.”

The Breakthrough Listen project, as it is known, intends to direct some of the largest radio telescopes in the world on a decade-long mission to find evidence of intelligent life. Already, the 64-meter Parkes radio telescope in Australia and the 100-meter Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia have been enlisted in the project to search the nearest million stars, which is three orders of magnitude more stars than before, as well as listen along the galactic plane of the Milky Way and to a hundred nearby galaxies for radio signals from another world.

What do you think?  Will they be successful and how would you change this strategy if at all?

thanks to astrobio.net for the great info