World of Chatbots – The Grand Meetup

400 beers, 300 participants, 4 great speakers, 1 botastic night

This was World of Chatbots – The Grand Meetup:

What started as the plan for a small to medium sized meetup ended up filling the whole atrium at weXelerate – the new Central European startup hub with 300 bot-interested people, 4 fantastic keynote speakers from all over the world – and of course some beer. It’s safe to say that we couldn’t be more excited about it!

January 24^th kicked off what will be a fantastic bot year – and it’s great to see that the interest in chatbots and conversational interfaces has only gotten greater. Vienna once again proved to show that it is still one of the biggest bot hubs in the world!

In a whirlwind of a night, Greg Leuch shared some secrets of Poncho and how it became the world’s favorite bot,  Prashant Pitti talked about NearGroup’s unconventional growth hacks and Susann Fischer & Markus Brunner gave insights into discovery & possibilities of bots on Facebook Messenger. Thanks to all of them for flying all the way to Vienna from NYC, Delhi, Dublin and London and for making it a night worthwhile.

Our Key Learnings:

Obviously, we don’t want to withhold all these insights from you. So without further ado, here are our 4 Key Learnings from “World of Chatbots – The Grand Meetup”:

Markus Brunner, Facebook Messenger:

“How do we build chat experiences that people will love?” was the main theme here. Markus a couple of tips on that:

“Start small, dream big” – Just get started and try with a basic use case. Build it up from there.
“Be honest, don’t pretend” – Don’t pretend not to be a bot. Be honest and educate your users about the limitations of your bot.
“Learn and improve continuously” – Keep learning from user feedback. Check conversations, learn where users get stuck and improve your bot constantly.

Greg Leuch, Poncho

“Build emotional connections with your users”
If there is one thing we can learn from Poncho, it is how to build conversational experiences users can relate to and have fun with. Through adding little comments here and there Poncho is giving users a glimpse of his life, making him a character with a history like you and me.

Susann Fischer, Facebook

“Really think about how the welcome screen resonates with your service and how you can use a little bit of text to get people excited to get started. ”
We all know how hard it can be to keep it short and interesting at the same time. But Susann really stressed the fact that you only get one shot to make a good first impression. So make it count and use the welcome screen wisely.

Prashant Pitti, NearGroup

“Ask your users what they want” 
So simple, so obvious – yet, how many of us actually apply it? This tip continues to work out very well for NearGroup, as the team doesn’t have to worry about what feature to launch next – their users will tell them. It also makes users more excited about the product, as they feel valued and have a say in what happens next. Definitely a tip to keep in mind for your next feature-implementation.

Next chance: Demo Day

In case you missed it: you can find the photos of our event here. Your next chance to attend one of our bot events will be our ELEVATE Demo Day on May 23^rd – definitely make sure to save the date!

Thanks to all of you for your interest, for coming and for staying for a beer or two afterwards – we hope you had just as much fun as we did and can’t wait to see you all again soon at our Demo Day!

Psssst: If you found your passion for conversational interfaces, machine learning or growth hacking at our event – or if you’ve always been passionate about it – we are currently hiring. What are you waiting for? Click here to apply!