Ben Brown on bot tools
The O’Reilly Bots Podcast: An optimistic look at the future of bots.
"Science & Invention," by John Augustus Walker, 1935. (source: Library of Congress on Wikimedia Commons)
In this episode of the O’Reilly Bots Podcast, Pete Skomoroch and I speak with Ben Brown, co-founder and CEO of Howdy.ai, the bot toolmaker behind the Botkit framework. Brown also runs the Talkabot conference, which was held in Austin this past September.
Discussion points:
Learn faster. Dig deeper. See farther.
- The types of bots that people are building and experimenting with on Botkit
- How the evolution of bots compares to the evolution of mobile apps
- The strikingly collegial bots community: Brown cites the contributions that IBM and Microsoft have made to Botkit
- Praise for new types of bots, including notification bots (such as Poncho), what Brown calls “unfurling content” bots (such as Purple), and bots that open channels to discussions with humans
- Thington, an Internet of Things platform that functions like a chatroom for micro-bots connected to different home devices
Other links:
- The Harvard Business Review bot, which sends out advice articles
- Bloomberg article on Slack’s partnership with IBM to build chatbots
- IBM’s “World of Watson” event, held in October