🌩 ROS World 2020 Call for Lightning Talk Videos

[Katherine_Scott]

Hi All,

If you missed the announcement we’re putting together a virtual ROS event called ROS World for November 12th. If you’ve been to a ROSCon recently you may have noticed how the lightning talks are one of the most anticipated parts of the conference. Lightning talks are a great way to get your new package, robot, research, development process, or idea in front of a larger audience. We’re hoping to replicate the ROSCon lighting talks at our ROS World event. Our approach is to allow the community to submit short videos that we use during ROS World. We plan to take approximately the best two dozen or so videos and mash them up into a super cut that will play in between ROS World sessions.

We’re looking for all sorts of videos from the ROS community, and as such we’re open to videos related to any ROS topic you deem appropriate. Got a cool new robot? That’s worth a video. Have a great package that could use a few more maintainers? That’s worth a video. Want to ramble about your software pet-peeve for ninety seconds? Be our guest. Anything goes.

We’re still finalizing the details but the parameters for a video submission are as follows:

• Immediately related to ROS and the ROS community
• Less than 120 seconds
• Format: MP4
• Resolution: 1920 x 1080p (full HD) preferred, minimum 1280 x 720 p
• File size: 500MB - 3.5GB. Files should not exceed 5GB.
• Audio: Stereo is preferred, mono is acceptable
• Please use a consistent file name of <contact_name>_.mp4
• The videos don’t need to be overly produced but they should be short, clear, and to the point.
• Our event coordinator has put together these recommendations for recording:
  20ROSWorld_VideoReelTips.pdf (153.9 KB)

We’re still finalizing the process and due dates for video submissions but our preliminary due date for video is Wednesday 2020-10-01T01:00:00Z.

UPDATE

I talked with the event planners, and due to multiple requests I am going to push the deadline back by another week! If you haven’t submitted a video the due date is now: 2020-10-07T13:00:00Z.

To submit your video please use this Google form
We accept videos uploaded to websites like YouTube and Vimeo, and raw videos.

If you have any questions feel free to ask away in the comments below.

[Katherine_Scott]

Someone has put a bug in my ear about potentially also having an “unofficial” robot / simulation dance competition. Considering that we now have official models/urdfs for Spot robots this could be kinda fun.

Anyone have strong opinions on this?

[pxalcantara]

Would be different robots making a dancing competition in a simulated environment? If it’s the idea I really like it

[Mohamed_Ahmed]

The google form is not working

[herb-kuta-lge]

@Katherine_Scott

We’re still finalizing the process and due dates for video submissions but our preliminary due date for video is Wednesday September 30, 2020 6:00 PM .

Is this now the actual due date? Is that 6PM Pacific Time?

[Katherine_Scott]

Can you be more specific? I just ran through the form in a private tab without any problems.

[Katherine_Scott]

We sorted this out. Appears to be a country specific issue. If you can’t get to the website you can either e-mail me directly (kat@openrobotics.org) or use a VPN to get around it.

[kyrofa]

@herb-kuta-lge

Is this now the actual due date? Is that 6PM Pacific Time?

@Katherine_Scott would you mind confirming this, please?

[Katherine_Scott]

Let’s say 6 PM. Let me check the schedule a bit I might be able to push it out.

[swaroophs]

Hey Katherine,

Should we expect to hear back from you say a couple of days after submission? Or will we be informed about whether the video was selected or not only AFTER the deadline specified in your post?

Best,
Swarooph

[mastns]

Hello,

I have the same question as @swaroophs. Is there a date that we will be notified about our lightning talk (accepted or not) ?

Best,
Thanasis

[Katherine_Scott]

We will select our top eight or so videos to go into the program. Unfortunately, our event planners may need a mechanism to make more time so a talk could end up on the cutting room floor. This is to say I may not have a full list until the day of. I will try to post all the lightning talks we received after the event.

[ruffsl]

In addition to posting the lightning talk videos, would it be possible to post the PDF slides for them as well, to make them more accessible than video formats? I’m not sure if everyone is submitting videos with closed captions, i.e. for those with disabilities.

[Katherine_Scott]

With respect to slides, we didn’t request them from speakers so that probably won’t happen. I did ask for short descriptions with links and social media / github profiles. Not all speakers are using slides.

With respect to closed captioning we are currently working with our event planner to get quotes on closed captioning services. We should have more information about that in the near future. I am not sure if we’ll be able to close caption all the submitted videos, but we will close caption the ones in the main program assuming we can find a vendor and it isn’t cost prohibitive.

[kyrofa]

A heads up to those who haven’t noticed, the deadline has been pushed back a week. See the edited OP for more details.

[felixvd]

Oh yeah, that would have been nice to notice earlier. roscon.org still has the old submission deadline. Guess I’ll have to update my entry, especially if it’s only 8 videos. Is it really going to be no more than a 15 minute slot for lightning talks? Hm.