Call for Organizer: Maritime Community Working Group

Community Groups Marine Robotics
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The Maritime Community Working Group is looking for a new organizer. This is an entirely voluntary role.

If you are passionate about building, maintaining, and expanding a community of ROS users in the maritime domain (surface and underwater vehicles), to facilitate communication and collaboration in the domain which is so truly needed, to interact with community members across industry, academia, and government, and applying your creativity and regular commitment to all that, then you might like being the new organizer.

You can view all the historical meeting announcements in Marine Robotics - Open Robotics Discourse , all the meeting minutes and associated links for the past 2 years in the ROS Maritime Community Group meeting agenda - Google Docs (owner of doc is OSRF org), and other older activities in the GitHub repo/kanban (Are We Maritime Yet · GitHub).

I’ve changed jobs twice since leaving Open Robotics, and I feel the Working Group is best run by someone firmly in the ROS community and regularly interacting with ROS users.

I would like to thank Evan Palmer (@evan-palmer) for proactively co-organizing the group and being a great help in 2024 when I was settling in a new country and job. I’ve returned to the US in 2025, but moving continents twice in a year has drained my energy, and I am shedding some personal-professional responsibilities outside of work.

We are hoping to find someone already familiar with the Working Group and has attended meetings before, to make it easier for us to advocate for your running the group. Otherwise it would be difficult for us to judge suitability. But that is not to turn away new faces. Nor is it a requirement to run the group the way it was run before. The group should adapt to changing needs of the industry and the community.

Some existing members of the group may still be open to helping to run occasional meetings, if help is needed. The group has advocates and long-time members who still work in marine robotics (myself included) who can help advise and suggest networking opportunities, we just cannot find time to commit to running the group regularly. It’s not a lot of time, but it is a regular and long-term commitment.

Please direct message me (@mabelzhang) and cc @evan-palmer if you are interested.

Thank you!

Mabel Zhang

5 Likes
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Hello Mabel,

I’m glad to express my interest in the role. I currently serve as a Product Manager at Marketplace Afrika and am also an engineering student with a growing interest in maritime technology and ROS.

I’m a beginner in the ROS ecosystem, but I’m eager to learn, collaborate, and contribute to building and strengthening the maritime robotics community. I believe my background in engineering and product development can bring valuable organizational and communication skills to the group.
I couldn’t send a direct message because I’m new to this platform.

Please let me know if I can share a brief background or additional details about my experience and interests.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

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Thank you for your interest! I’ve messaged you.

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A new organizer has been found. A regular attendee has stepped up. The call is now closed. We will make an announcement soon. Thank you!