ROS is becoming mainstream. But let’s face it, its ability to generate a revenue for ROS Developers is very low.

In this post, I propose you a simple way to generate a stable revenue by delivering online ROS Workshops.

Everything done from your location. The only thing you need is a good internet connection and good knowledge of ROS or related subjects.

What are ROS Workshops?

ROS workshops are 5 hours live sessions where the instructor explains a given ROS/Robotics/AI subject to the audience (students that attend the workshop).

• The video is streamed to the audience. It will include instructor’s face as well as computer screen
• The workshop is based on practice
• To deliver the workshop, the instructor will create a rosject that contains the documentation, code, simulations, etc…
• The audience will have a copy of the rosject prior to the workshop.
• Workshops have a pause in the middle of it of 20 mins.
• Audience will be practicing with the instructor at the same time
• After the workshop is done, the attendants will have forever access to the rosject and video.
• People who were not able to enrol and attend the workshop, can still buy its recording and rosject.

Workshops Must Be Based on Practice

Even if you can deliver a workshop just by opening a Zoom account and streaming live, the aim when delivering a workshop at The Construct is different. You should provide a fully practical workshop. That is a requirement. This means that the attendants must be practicing with you while you explain.

The way of allowing practice during the workshop is by using a rosject. A rosject is a ROS project executed on The Construct cloud.

• A rosject contains all the documentation of the workshop in the form of a Jupyter notebook
• It also contains the ROS packages for the simulations to be used
• It may contain other code required for the workshop
• It doesn’t depend on the attendant computer (Linux, Mac or Windows)

The rosject must be created by the instructor prior to the workshop. Then, it will be shared with all the attendants by The Construct platform.

This means that:

1. The instructor must prepare the rosject prior to the workshop
2. The instructor and the attendants will launch the rosject and follow it along during the workshop
3. Attendants will keep a copy of that rosject forever, including the workshop video recording

Why to use a rosject?

• Because the attendants need to learn by practicing with the instructor. This is The Construct motto.
• Instructor cannot ensure all the attendants will have a proper setup for the lessons (may be even doesn’t have a Linux computer).
• Instructor doesn’t want to be dealing with computer configuration related issues during the intensive workshop

A rosject ensures that all the attendants will be able to reproduce instructor’s lessons the same exact way he planned from minute one of the workshop.

IMPORTANT: rosjects content can be downloaded by attendants anytime to their local computers. They have no special format, just current Linux files.

Instructor earnings

• Every workshop is limited to 15 students maximum. This limitation allows a good quality of the workshop.

• Price of the workshop starts at 199€, but the instructor can set any other larger price above that if he considers it (for instance, for very specialised subjects).
  • This means, with 199€, every workshop can generate up to 2985€. The Construct will keep 50% off it and provide the other 50% to the instructor (1492.5€).
  • Why this earnings split? Remember that every time a student launches the rosject, a cloud computer is started. The money is required to pay that cost.

• Additionally, after the workshop has been done, a package containing the video and the rosject will be sold on The Construct platform, so anybody can reproduce the workshop at will. Sales of this workshop will also be split by half for The Construct and the Instructor. Workshop recordings with code and notes are expected to be sold 100€ more expensive than the live event.

This means that the workshop can become a passive income revenue for you. You can be generating money by selling that workshop for a long time.

Remember that you can create as many workshops as you want!

That is what we call a ROS Passive Income! 😉

How to deliver a workshop at The Construct

At The Construct we want you to make a good living delivering your workshops, but we care even more for the students. Workshops delivered at The Construct must have high quality. That is why we put a lot of attention to some details necessary to control the quality of the workshops, to make students learn a lot.

Please follow the following steps carefully to prepare your workshop.

Let’s take as an example our last Workshop about ROS2 (Full Intro to ROS2 Galactic Workshop)

1st Step: Decide your workshop’s subject, agenda, date and time

Create a small text file with the following data:

• Name and title of the instructor. Instructor must have a profile in The Construct with picture and details filled (there is a link to the instructor’s profile so attendants can check the background of the teacher before deciding to enroll).
  • Ex. : Alberto Ezquerro, Head of Education at The Construct

• Day and time you will deliver the workshop (indicate time zone!)
  • Ex. : 27/7/2021, 18:00:00 CEST
• Price for attending (at present only € amounts are accepted)
  • Ex. : 199€
• Workshop title (the shorter the better)
  • Ex. Full Intro to ROS2 Galactic Workshop (Python)
• Workshop short description, a sentence describing what the workshop is about
  • Ex. Master in only 5 hours ROS2 Basics with Python
• Workshop full description. What is this workshop about
  • Ex. : Completely practical workshop, using simulated robots No configuration required. Everything provided ready to work
• List of topics that will be covered
  • Ex. :
    • How to create ROS2 packages
    • How to access to the motors of a ROS2 robot (publishers)
    • How to access to the sensors of a ROS2 robot (subscribers)
    • How to build an obstacle avoidance application for a ROS2 robot
    • How to manage nodes (executors and callback groups)
    •  How to debug ROS2 programs
• Who should attend the workshop. What is the audience for this workshop
  • Ex. : ROS Developers that want to start transitioning to ROS2
• Prerequisites (if any). A list of subjects that attendants must know prior to attend the workshop
  • Ex. :
    • A basic knowledge of Linux
    •  A basic knowledge of Python
• Agenda. List all times and topics delivered at each time. Remember to schedule for the 20 minutes break in the middle of the workshop
  • Ex. :

18:00-18:1027/07/2021 CEST	Intro to ROS2 Workshop
18:10-19:0027/07/2021 CEST	Creating ROS2 packages and code
19:00-19:5027/07/2021 CEST	Accessing robot actuators
19:50-20:4027/07/2021 CEST	Accessing robot sensors
20:40-21:0027/07/2021 CEST	Coffee Break
21:00-21:4027/07/2021 CEST	Obstacle Avoidance
21:40-22:2027/07/2021 CEST	Node Management
22:20-23:0027/07/2021 CEST	ROS2 Debugging

Workshop Cover Image

The Construct will take care of building a proper and nice image for your workshop. We will use that image to feature the workshop in our main page.

We will send you the Workshop Cover Image so you can use it to promote the workshop on your social networks.

Ex.

Workshop marketing

The Construct will promote the workshop over our community, but you should also take care of promoting it if you want it to be a success.

2nd step: create the workshop rosject

The rosject is the ROS project at The Construct that contains the material that you will share with the audience.

Inside the rosject, you should put the following:

1. Notebook with all the content the attendants will learn
2. Simulation code
3. Any extra code attendants will need during the workshop

You can get many ideas about how to create your rosjects from our Live Classes. Actually, our Live Classes follow the same principle. They are like workshops with a shorter duration (and everything is provided for free).

Watch some of our Live Classes to understand what to include in the workshop rosject and how to deliver one workshop.

IMPORTANT REMARK 1: Remember that each rosject has on average 2CPUs. So properly calculate the material that you are going to put there, otherwise your practice may be very slow.

IMPORTANT REMARK 2: Take into account that your rosject must be create as private (otherwise it will be publicly seen by other users of The Construct) . The free account of The Construct does not allow the creation of private rosjects, so you will need to get a private account which is only 9€/month.

Equipment

To start streaming you only require:

• Have a camera (any webcam will do it)
• Have a mic
• Have a fast internet connection

On the day of the workshop, The Construct will call you through Hangouts and broadcast the call to the audience.

Final remarks

Workshop Certificate

The Construct will automatically issue a certificate of attendance to all the participants to your workshop, provided that they attended 3 hours or more.

Issue of the certificates is automatic. You don’t have to care about preparing it, but you should mention it during your marketing of the event.

Workshop Evaluation

Remember that workshops will be evaluated at the end by the attendants (only if they attended more than 3 hours). The evaluation will be shown in the page of selling workshops, as well as on the instructor profile. Getting a good review is necessary if you want that your workshop sales well after delivery.

Time Zones

Remember that people live in different time zones, so think carefully what time do you want to do your workshop so maximum amount of people will attend

What to do is just a few people register for the live workshop?

That is up to you. You can cancel the workshop by sending us a notice at least 24h before the workshop. If you cancel the workshop less than 24 hours to it, or simply do not deliver it as planned, you may be banned of the platform.

Conclusion

This is a new way of generating money teaching ROS. Different from building a course on Udemy or another video course platform because the attendants practice with the instructor.

Remember that your workshop will be displayed to hundreds of thousands of ROS Developers around the world, because of The Construct network. This increases your chances of getting more students interested in your workshop and hence, have more sales.

In case you want to know more, I will be delivering a Live Session on Youtube discussing all those ideas, next Wednesday the 4th of August 2021 here.