Organizing a Significant ROS Event at Porto Digital 06-09 November 2024– Looking for Community Guidance

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Hello ROS Community,

I’m excited to share that we’re planning an event that will take place at Porto Digital, the largest technology park in Latin America, located in Recife, from November 6th to 9th. The event will bring together key figures and companies from the technology sector, and it will be broadcast by Rede Globo, the largest television network in Brazil. Our team has been given the responsibility to organize the robotics segment, and we see this as a great opportunity to connect with others, form partnerships, and share knowledge through talks and workshops.

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However, as we are relatively new to organizing an event of this scale, especially in the context of international standards, we’re reaching out to the ROS community for advice and support. We want to ensure that our event aligns with the expectations and quality that ROS Meetups and Summits are known for.

Our event will focus on the latest advancements in ROS, and we’ve already confirmed a few talks and workshops, including:

  • Title: Robotics as a Service Aiming at Reducing HHER
    Speaker: Doglas Negri
    Description: A practical approach to reducing human exposure to risks through innovative non-conventional robotic solutions across various industries.
  • Title: Integrating CANopen Controllers with ROS 2 Control
    Speaker: Lucas Matana Luza
    Description: A workshop to explore integrating CANopen controllers with ROS2 for controlling anthropomorphic robotic arms.
  • Title: Autonomous Truck Path Planning in Agricultural Environments Using Open Source Software
    Speaker: Marcus Vinicius Leal de Carvalho
    Description: Customizing the Navigation2 Stack for autonomous vehicles in agricultural settings, focusing on obstacle detection, braking, and collision avoidance.
  • Title: Introduction to Moveit 2 (Robotic Manipulation Platform for ROS 2)
    Speaker: Rodrigo Formiga Farias
    Description: A minicourse covering basic robotic manipulator control concepts, introduction to the Moveit platform, and hands-on practice with the Panda robot arm.

We would greatly appreciate any advice on the following:

  1. Should we categorize this event as a ROS Meetup, ROS Summit, or something else entirely?
  2. What are the necessary steps to officially align this event with the ROS community’s standards, especially considering the guidelines set by OSRF and organizations like The Construct?
  3. Are there specific guidelines or best practices we should follow to ensure the event meets the community’s expectations?
  4. How can we encourage more universities, companies, and speakers to join and contribute?

We’re eager to learn from those with more experience and to make this event a success with your help. Any guidance or suggestions from the community would be invaluable as we continue planning.

@Katherine_Scott @tfoote @dirk-thomas @jackie @ricardotellez Could you please provide some guidance on how we should approach organizing this event to ensure it aligns with the standards and expectations of the ROS community? We are particularly interested in knowing whether we should categorize it as a ROS Meetup, ROS Summit, or something else, and what steps we should take to officially align it with the community’s best practices.

Thank you in advance for your support!

Best regards

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It sounds like you’re planning a pretty amazing event! It’d be great if the televised version could be made available on the Internet, even if only at a later date.

You’re free to pick any name you choose, as long as you comply with the ROS and OSRF trademark guidelines. I think your case would be a “Community ROS workshop”. Feel free to submit the dates of your event to the community events calendar!

Only events by the OSRF or licensed by the OSRF (i.e. local ROSCons) would be “official”. But that shouldn’t stop you holding an awesome event! There are far more community-organised events than “official” events, and we like it that way! We like the community working together to spread the joy of ROS, Gazebo, Open-RMF, and all the other OSRF projects. (It also means less work for @Vanessa_Yamzon_Orsi and myself.) If you want to keep our community values, you can make your event follow the same Code of Conduct as ROSCon. A more general, not-just-for-events Code of Conduct is hosted by the OSRF, and applies to all activities, such as use of GitHub, use of this forum, etc.

(For clarity, The Construct is no more involved in setting guidelines for the ROS community than any other community member, including yourself! The OSRF takes the lead on producing and keeping the Code of Conduct up to date, but what goes into it takes a big chunk of knowledge from our shared community experience.)

You should focus on what your audience needs. What do you want them to get out of the event? What do you want them to learn? What do you expect them to contribute back to the event, or to the wider community after the event? How would you make your participants so happy they came that they want to come again next time? Then build your event based on those criteria. From the OSRF’s point of view, we’re happy for events to happen and wish for them all to be good events of benefit to their target audience (usually, anyone with an interest in robotics, including engineers and students and hobbyists, in the local area).

This is the hardest part, and depends on how you want each of those to contribute.

For universities, you probably want students and academics to join as participants, and so contribute to making the event lively. The best way to help students participate is provide a discounted participation fee, if you have to pay to participate, or provide free food, if there’s no participation fee. For the academics, you need to make it worth their time to come and listen rather than stay and do their work, which is likely to be taking up most of their time outside of teaching.

For companies, you would like company engineers to come and talk about how they use ROS, Gazebo, Open-RMF, etc. For that, you need to make it worth their companies letting them attend and covering costs, which means making sure the talks get good exposure. You also want company engineers to come and listen to the talks. To attract them, have good talks that will teach them something (you’re already doing well there), and make sure there are a lot of other people also coming so they can exchange contact information, exchange knowledge, discover collaboration opportunities, etc.

To attract speakers, you need to ensure that people who like giving talks know about the event (and then they’ll come naturally), and for those who are less positive about giving talks, convince them that it is worth doing.

I hope that helps! Feel free to reach out to us directly at community@openrobotics.org if you like!

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Hi @gbiggs Thank you very much for this complete response!!! as well as this support for our event.

The organizing team has chosen “ROS Summit,” as some formal invitations have already been sent out with this title. We are honored to have national leaders in robotics using ROS and participation from internationally renowned universities like USP and large companies already utilizing ROS-based robots.

As far as I understood, we could use the ROS logo (from OSRF), but about the Summit name, would be possible to use it? As you said the ROSCon is an official event by OSRF, the Summit name is also organized by OSRF or could we use this to get more attendants, lecturers, and enterprises in this event? In general, we wish to attract more developers from this community in Brazil and worldwide.

We would like to know if we can use an official ROS logo and event branding as “ROS Summit.” ? Who would be the best person to contact to formalize this and promote the event through the community channels?

I am going to send an e-mail to community@openrobotics.org as you have suggested. Do you suggest more specific e-mails and channels, or a specific person involved that could help us? (you cited @Vanessa_Yamzon_Orsi . I would like to have a video meeting if possible, to understand our limits and possibilities.

Thank you again for your support, and I look forward to your response.

Best regards,
Marcus

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That’s amazing Marcus. I didn’t know this event. As a suggestion, I think that would be great to post it in the ROS Brazil group so maybe the community can enjoy and contribute to this event even more.

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Hi Guys, I’m Kelen, Professor At UFSCar. I can give you more information about the ROS event, I talked in person with Vanessa Orsi. I need help to organize ROSCON in Brazil, and Recife could be a nice place to do it.
Are you part of the SBR robotics group?

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Hi @Kelen_UFSCar gret news. No, I’m not at SBR group, but I’d like to know more about this organization :smiling_face_with_three_hearts: :face_with_monocle:

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Could we have a meeting to talk about it?
Send an e-mail to vivaldini@ufscar.br @pxalcantara and @Marcus_Vinicius_Leal and we can organize it.

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Hi @pxalcantara yes the event will be amazing. We have a WhatsApp group called ROS Brasil. I have already requested our manager a link to this group to provide here in Discourse for the ’ ROS Brazil users group’. My role was to catch attention of official institutions such as OSRF and understand the guidelines to officialize our event. Can you provide your e-mail addresses? I will set up a meeting with you, Kellen, and my supervisor. We will have our weekly meeting tomorrow, and as soon as I have feedback from him I will post something about the event in ROS Brazil local group on Discourse.

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community@openrobotics.org is the one to use for all your event-related queries. That will go to all the people at Open Robotics who can help you out with things like helping to promote the event, what names and logo usages are appropriate, setting up a meeting to talk about it, and so on.

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Hello Marcus,

I would like to join the WhatsApp group.

+55 51 99507 0597

Porto Alegre Brazil

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Hi, guys!
I’ve been working with ROS as a research topic at UTFPR, Paraná. It’d be great to participate in this ROS Summit. Please, let me know if you need any help, and keep us posted about the event.
Cheers,

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I have sent the link in DM @ricardo_bhio @Michel_Albonico

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Hi Marcus,
I am interested in joining this WhatsApp group, can you add me?

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Hey Marcus,

I would also like to be a part of the Whatsapp group chat, Could you add me as well ?