Last night, TiE held a great software services SIG meeting at the MIT Museum. It was very well attended, with perhaps 75 people in attendance to hear some of the top names in the industry talk about robots, software design and much more. The night was led by Neena Buck, an industry analyst, who gave a great overview of the industry focusing on its origins and growth possibilities. Next, one of the leaders of TiE Boston spoke about the organization for a few moments.

The main draw, however, were the panelists, who were all quite accomplished in their respective areas of the field. Helen Greiner, of iRobot gave a cool presentation about the formation of her company. There was a lot of video and personal stories which the audience seemed to appreciate. Dan Kara, President, Robotics Trends was the moderator of the panel. The panelists included:

  • Joe Jones, Co-founder and CTO, Q Robotics
  • Rory Mackean, Manager of R&D, Mobile Robots
  • Cory Kidd, PhD Candidate, Robotic Life Group, MIT Media Labs
  • Dr. Christopher Wallsmith, CKO, BlueFin Robotics

Aside from the heat in the room, everyone was very attentive and the panel went on for quite some time with everyone getting involved. I thought that a lot of good thoughts were revealed and many audience members asked questions to the panel. The MIT Museum itself is very nice, and some of the participants had brought their robots to be shown.

The event was very well run, and many people commented to me that they were very glad they could come and be a part of a fun and educational night of robots.

I took some photos of the event, which I have uploaded to the site.