Experience from ROS Boston:

How to ROS like a BOS
Chris Lalancette & Ian McMahon

ROSTONROSTONWho are we?

ROS

Chris: clalancette@gmail.com
GitHub: @clalancette

Ian: ian@ianthe.engineer
GitHub: @iantheengineer

Open Robotics
ROS Melodic Maintainer
ROS 2 Core Contributor

MoveIt Maintainer
ROS1 Community Contributor
Former Baxter & Sawyer Maintainer

TON

Why do we host a ROS meetup in ourcommunity?
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Meet fellow roboticists nearby
Discover cool things people are working on○ Research○ Companies○ Startups
Find local collaborators for projects
Venue for roboticists to meet with companies toﬁnd work
Networking
It’s fun!

TON

Overview of our events
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Focus around ROS and Gazebo○ Open source heavily encouraged
35-50 attendees per event○ Free to attend
Rotating event venue
Meetup format:○ 30 minutes food/networking
at the start○ 2-3 talks per event■ Talks ~20-30 minutes○ 30 minutes reserved for networking among attendees

TON

How do we ﬁnd time to organize this?
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Do it whenever we can (2+ month cadence)
Not a huge time sinkHelpful to have multiple people organizing○ Split up workload○ Have events even when co-organizer is missing○ Leverage the power of multiple people’s networks○ More fun○ @alexacela, thanks for your help the last year!

TONEvent component: Venue●ROSRotating set of venues○ Pros■ Attendees get to see diﬀerent places■ Diﬀerent set of attendees based on location○ Cons■ Regular attendees have to go to diﬀerent places■ Regular attendees may not be able to make allvenues■ Some venues have stricter policies● Security● Locked doors● Sign NDA■ Additional logistical burden on organizers
TON

Event component: Sponsor●●●ROSProvides money for food, drinks
Optionally provides prizes
Can also provide the venue and talks○ But too much focus from one company
excludes others○ We allow a single talk but focus on otherspeakers for the restTON

Event component: Speakers
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Strive for speakers from diﬀerent backgrounds○ Academia○ Industry○ ResearchUse personal networks to ﬁnd speakers○ Ask nicely :)○ Oﬀer free pizza○ People are excited to present their work
Talk format○ Technical talks preferred○ 20-30 minutes (leaving 5-10 minutes for questions)○ Open-source robotics or ROS/Gazebo related (or both)TON

ROSTONEvent component: Advertisement
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We use https://eventbrite.com to organize the event○ Also general advertising
Post event details to https://discourse.ros.org/local
Have a sign in sheet at each event○ Send direct email for next event to past attendees
Partner with a local tech incubator has given us
access to even more roboticists○ Thanks to Joyce Sidopoulos from Massrobotics
for much help!

TONEvent component: Frequency (rclpy.Rate)
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4-6 events per year
Ideally one every 2 months
More important to keep events at regular interval(trying to get better at this!)
Community appreciates frequency
Helpful to organize next event before current event takes
placeTONLaunching the eventfrom launch import LaunchDescription
from launch_ros.actions import ComposableNodeContainerfrom launch_ros.descriptions import ComposableNodedef generate_launch_description():ros_bos = ComposableNodeContainer(
node_name='ros_boston_event',
package='ros_boston_event',
node_executable='component_container',composable_node_descriptions=[
ComposableNode(package='venue', node_plugin='venue::Venue'),
ComposableNode(package='sponsor', node_plugin='sponsor::Sponsor'),ComposableNode(package='speakers', node_plugin='speakers::Speakers'),
ComposableNode(package='community', node_plugin='community::Community'),],
output='both',)return LaunchDescription([ros_bos])

ROSTONFuture work: Improving communityexperience
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A website○ Blog posts○ Information for speakers○ Past and upcoming events○ Slides○ Pictures/Videos of the events
Making/hosting recordings of the talks
Hackathon○ Slightly more work to setup○ Hands-on experience

TONClosing remarks
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Organizing events is very rewarding to us
Helpful to local community
Not a huge amount of time and eﬀort (if you havemultiple people to share the work)
You should do it too!

TONQuestions?
@clalancette@iantheengineer
ROSTON