The first Talkabot Conference in Austin put on by Howdy was amazing and everyone had a great time. In this group's inaugural meetup, we want to share it with NYC and the world. It featured a variety of expert speakers ranging from chatbot builders to tool makers to luminaries from adjacent industries. In case that wasn’t enough, we were also joined by chatbot platform speakers from Facebook, Slack, Kik, Microsoft, and Google-owned API.ai. How much should AI play a part in your chatbot? How do you keep your users engaged? Find out the answers to those questions and more!

1. Alec Lazarescu @alec1a
Chatbots NYC & Global
Talkabot Highlights!

2. Community
Relationships
Agreements
Ben Brown
(Howdy)

3. Rise of the Writers
Top
event
theme!

4. Writing has been used
just 4% of the time
humanity has existed!
Erika Hall

5. This is not the only way
to write!
Solitary
Formal
Ponderous
Erika Hall

6. What happens when
writing gets more
social?
Texting & tweeting
more like oral culture!
This is the space
chatbots are entering
Erika Hall

7. Devs/Product/UX not
enough to “design” a
text interface
Bring on the writers!
Erika Hall

8. There’s a fundamental problem with how
the software business does things. We’re
asking people who are masters of
hard-edged technology to design the soft,
human side of software as well. As a
result, they make products that are really
cool — if you happen to be a software
engineer.
— Alan Cooper (computing pioneer)

9. Don’t make another
silo.
Bring them in early not
at the end!
Erika Hall

10. Major success factor
Don’t make your bot a
mental strain.
It should not feel like
navigating a foreign
language.
Erika Hall

11. Comedy writers provide
dialog
CMS was created for
writers to work in

12. Poncho analyzes
everything
Good jokes
Bad jokes
Conversational dead
ends
Greg Leuch

13. Quartz’s news bot
feature a CMS too
Sam Williams

14. Giving your bot a soul is
not a technical problem,
it's an editorial problem.
-Robert Hoffer
Technology is an enabler
for your bot understanding
intent, but for now, it takes
a human touch to craft
engaging responses.
Robert credited diverse team for SmarterChild

15. Personality is a feature!
It delights and engages
users.
Fun share from Max Sklar
from Foursquare’s
Marsbot.

16. Pixar makes digital
characters come to life
Pullstring co-founded by
20+ year Pixar veteran
Hello Barbie can talk for 30
hours without repeating.
She remembers. She’s a
friend. She behaves like
she’s listening.
— Sarah Wulfeck and
Lucas Ives

17. Characters first!
Who is the character?
What do they want?
What do they have
opinions on and what
do they ignore?
Sarah Wulfeck Lucas Ives

18. Rise of the Writers
Personal Bots

19. Crazy amount of press
Lots of job offers
Instead founded
Olabot

20. What’s your story?
Can a bot tell it?
Esther Crawford

21. Rise of the Writers
Bots to Remember

24. Rise of the Writers
Celebrity Bots

25. Esther Crawford was hired
by LMFAO’s RedFoo to
create his chatbot

26. In a bit over 10 years we
went from fan site to fan
bot…
Josh Bocanegra just made
SelenaBot unprompted
Is that shady?
Outright illegal?
Genius?

27. Josh’ next celebrity bot was
BY REQUEST

28. Yes, this is real.

29. Bots for brands

30. Careful!
First rule for
established brands is
do no harm
Smaller tech
companies generally
have more leeway
Christian Brucculeri

31. Value at both ends of
the funnel
Effective CRM is
harder yet more
profitable
Christian Brucculeri

32. Do chatbots need AI?

33. Ted Livingston, CEO of
Kik, outspoken on AI
Ted
Livingston

34. Users should not be left at the equivalent
of a blinking command-line prompt
Use AI to augment your bots but don’t
make it the point of it.
— Ted Livingston, CEO of Kik

35. The biggest misconception is that
chatbots have to chat.
— Ted Livingston, CEO of Kik

36. BOTH
Balance machine
learning and rules
Easier for humans to
craft characters with
rules
AI better identifies
intent
Sarah Wulfeck
Lucas Ives

37. Text speak vs. natural spoken
language — when is a typo not a typo?.
— Pullstring

38. ML saves humans time
Mix of:
NLTK, SpaCy, NumPy,
& Keras + TensorFlow.
Drew Magliozzi

39. Andy thinks AI is
critical to the equation
More to come...
Andy Mauro

40. Do chatbots need AI?
Personalization and Context

41. Don’t be this bot with ZERO
short term memory.

42. Hello Barbie remembers
Kik’s Coffeebot knows your
last order
SmarterChild revisits the
past with you

43. Storing past info shared by
the user is key
Doesn’t HAVE to be AI

44. For chatbots, CLU (conversational
language understanding) is important for
appropriate context.
Context > Variables
— Andy Mauro (Automat.ai)

46. Do chatbots need AI?
Prompting and Engagement

47. Does your user know how
and when to involve the
bot?
70% of conversations with
poncho bot on Facebook
Messenger are started through
push notifications
— Greg Leuch (Poncho)

48. If your bot knows
finance and user
doesn’t, have your bot
lead!
Need human help? Bot
connects you with
adviser. $$
Rob Guilfoyle

49. Why not spread out
training.
Quick quiz prompts like
social media/dating
sites.
Esther Crawford

50. Do chatbots need AI?
Navigating Group Dynamics

51. Kip helps groups make
buying decisions
Different types of
groups need
differentiated
workflows
Office workers vs
teenage friends
Alyx Baldwin

52. Web sites are good for
dense information
presentation and
filtering
Chatbots are not
AI can make some
decisions for you to
simplify choices
Rachel Law

53. AI Final Thoughts
● Does the end user benefit from AI?
● Is your interface approachable?
Good AI helps, poor AI confuses

54. Are chatbots brand new?

55. Not even close!
ELIZA was created in the
mind 1960’s!

56. Nuance was creating
expert voice systems
for over a decade
People there went on
to big things!
Worth listening!
Andy Mauro

57. Andy Mauro

58. Andy Mauro

59. Andy Mauro

60. Andy Mauro

61. Robert Hoffer
Advice from
SmarterChild creator
on modern day bot
building
(at one time 30m users
and 5% of all IM traffic)

62. Robert Hoffer
How did Watson train?
Watson and industry
move faster now of
course
Mitch Mason

63. Industry Maturation

64. Do we all need to
spend time to group
synonyms??
Erika Hall

65. Jeff Pulver, co-founder
of Vonage suggests
CDBA
Web style standards
helped guide new
users.
Chatbot standards can
help as well.
Erika Hall /
Alyx Baldwin

66. Platform parity and
interoperability!
Andy Mauro

67. Measurement and
Case Studies
Prove your success or
find your gaps
Drew Magliozzi

68. dashbot.io
Maturing measurement suites

69. Multiplatform support with Microsoft Bot Framework

70. Multiplatform open-source howdy.ai/botkit (including support for Microsoft Bot Framework) and
Botkit Studio conversation tools and more (early access!)

71. Want users? Support a
few platforms.
message.io helps with
that too
Tom Hadfield

72. Open source contributions
starting
A brand new library for simpler language matching from
https://github.com/expando-lang/expando
— Matt Buck, co-founder of Voxable.
Write readable expressions in this form “(is it possible to|can I|how do I)
return (something|an item)”
A module for filtering swear words from bot communications
https://github.com/dariusk/wordfilter
— Darius Kazemi plus other contributors.

73. Platform News

74. Facebook (Mikhail
Larionov)
Slack (Amir Shevat)
Kik (Sergio Silva) + CEO (Ted
Livingston - not pictured)
Api.ai now Google (Ilya
Gelfenbeyn)
Microsoft (Steven Ickman - not
pictured)

75. IBM puts your in a

76. Platform News (B2B)
Platform Size / Advice from Slack

77. No native interop
Little overlap
Want users? Support a
few platforms.
Tom Hadfield

78. Amir Shevat

79. Amir Shevat

80. Amir Shevat

81. Amir Shevat
and this is a good thing
We all eventually lose
with a Crapp store

82. Amir Shevat

83. Amir Shevat

84. Amir Shevat
Launch
Medium post
ProductHunt
Let Slack know
Amir Shevat

85. We can sense awkwardness more easily
in oral conversation than when written.
Speak your chatbot’s dialog aloud.
— Amir Shevat (Slack)

86. Everyone is on SMS
and Facebook
Different demographics
but still lots of overlap
Tom Hadfield

87. Platform News (B2C)
Facebook

88. Payments!
Rich UI Improvements
(NOT HTML5)
Facebook Messenger News

89. Platform News (B2C)
WeChat

90. HUGE in China
People join WeChat at a
faster rate than new websites
get created on the web
Payments simple, effective,
and everywhere
Street stands and tutors take
WeChat payments

91. QRCodes work in
China
Bridge physical->digital
Slow start in US
though resurgence with
FB Messenger and
Snapchat versions
David ‘DC’ Collier

92. Influencer marketing
on WeChat KOL’s (key
opinion leaders)
Similar to Instagram
minor celebs
David ‘DC’ Collier

93. Platform News (B2C)
Kik

94. Kik demographics:
Kiks leads in engagement of
14-20 year olds
Commerce is fragmented in
US compared to China for
adults
Kik wants to nurture next
generation of consumers
WeChat of the West?

95. Thank you, Howdy.ai for an amazing conference!
(photo courtesy of Howdy)

96. Twitter: alec1a follow me, message me
Medium: https://medium.com/@aleclaza
https://chatbotsmagazine.com
http://devops.com/author/alecl/
Questions? Want to know more? Reach out!