When Developers Are Parents

Understanding Robots and Families at THAT Conference

Chris Meyer
Sep 7, 2018 · 4 min read

So, once upon a time, there was a robot, a huge conference in the great Wisconsin outdoors, more than 1100 professional developers, and over 300 kids. Welcome to THAT Conference. As described on the conference website, THAT Conference is: SUMMER CAMP FOR GEEKS™

Can you say “CamelCase”? Friendly fauna were frequent and family-appropriate visitors. Photo credits: THAT Conference (Instagram)

With over three days of both professional and family-friendly sessions, Misty had a near-constant stream of visitors of all ages to our booth during the conference. And those kid-robot-parent interactions were pretty telling. They took one of three forms:

  • Kids and Parents both into robots. These were the most enjoyable interactions. Typically these would play out with the child rushing over to touch, poke, or prod Misty and the parents following close behind (often apologizing for the exuberance of their offspring). Then, robot-loving credentials established, the whole family would engage in a conversation that ran the spectrum from hyper technical (do you find performance issues with a runtime environment running on the robot?) to use cases for teaching robotics (can it teach my kids how to program?). We’d talk through business uses and home uses and teaching uses, while their child interacted with Misty. Win-win-win.
The great outdoors can sometimes look a bit more like a conference hall than you would think, but the availability of electricity was appreciated.

What does all this tell me?

  1. Kids are hugely, naturally, emotionally invested in robots.

2. There is an enormous opportunity in child-related services for all of us in the robot (and robot software) industry. What’s more engaging to a child than a smartphone or tablet? A robot.

3. Most importantly, that we’ve got a real responsibility. We, in the robotics industry need to make robots that live up to kids’ expectations in terms of robots being trustable, emotionally positive presences in children’s lives.

P.S. While our time at THAT Conference was all too brief, I’m grateful that I did have the chance to sit down with Clark Sells and #AskTHAT and have a discussion about Misty Robotics and the industry in general:

During each of his sessions Clark asks the question “What does Community mean to you?” To me community is about moving things forward in a positive direction for all of us. And I think THAT has done an excellent job of cultivating a place where people can let their geek flag fly and be surrounded by those who want to collaborate and dig into those shared interests. Check out the rest of the community’s answers at THAT Twitter account.


MistyRobotics

The blog of the Misty Robotics team

Chris Meyer

Written by

Empowering every developer to get a foothold in the future of robotics @MistyRobotics.

MistyRobotics

The blog of the Misty Robotics team

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