In more than twenty years in this field, the most satisfying moments by far have come from working with people who have set aside their individual interests and biases to inspire students, nurture young scientists and create community and esprit de corps. And, while I truly enjoyed collaborating with Kathy McKeown on AAAI-91 and Gigina Aiello on IJCAI-99, helping to create the AAAI Robot Competition and Exhibition series with Pete Bonasso, Jim Firby, Dave Kortenkamp, David Miller, Reed Simmons, Holly Yanco, and a host of others was actually a lot of fun. The exercise was certainly not without its aggravations, as getting a sizable group of researchers to agree on any issue is not easy. But most of the effort was spent thinking about how to create useful technology, advance the science and art of robotics, and make the entire experience both educational and inspirational to participants and spectators alike. It was particularly gratifying to see the buzz of activity around this year’s event in Pittsburgh and learn about some of the new ideas involving social robots, assistive technologies, and, of course, cool hardware hacks. I don’t know what direction the field should take and, at this particular moment in my career as I return to research after several years in senior administration at Brown University, I’m content to pursue my own personal research interests in the intersection of robotics, machine learning and computational neuroscience. But I am thinking about how to get students interested in my research area and, in due course, I hope to work with the AI community to run workshops, develop tutorials, sponsor undergraduate research and all the other avenues open to us to nurture and sustain community, both scientific and social, in our rapidly evolving and increasingly central field.