Unofficial bot summit/#botally NYC meetup

Darius is delaying Bot Summit until next year, but I can't wait that long to hang out with all you NYC local botmakers, so I'm organizing this (totally unofficial) meetup. We'll have a few speakers scheduled, and then open up the mic and projector for anyone to show and discuss their bots (or bot-adjacent projects).

The space we'll be meeting in is generously provided by SFPC. Attendance is free but space is limited!

Speakers

Jia Zhang makes charts, graphs, and maps at youarehere.cc. She is a PhD student studying the theory and practice of information visualization. She was born and raised in Beijing, China, and now lives in Cambridge, MA. @jiazhang

Leonard Richardson is the author of robotfindskitten, Beautiful Soup, RESTful Web APIs, and Constellation Games. He is a software developer at the New York Public Library and has created numerous bots of genius and renown, including Ghostbusters Past, Minecraft Signs, Real Human Praise, and Smooth Unicode. Leonard made me write this bio for him.

What is a botmaker? How do I know if I am one?

That's a fine question. For the purposes of this meetup, a bot is an automated agent (like, say, a computer program) that makes content on the Internet. A lot of current practice in the field is focused on artistic, poetic and satirical bots that do creative things with language on Twitter (think Pentametron, Two Headlines, and Wikisext). But we're also interested in image bots, journalism bots, chat bots, bots for playing games, etc.—and not just on Twitter! Basically: If you make or are interested in automated algorithmic agents that live on the Internet, we want to hang out with you.

Sounds like fun. Is there a code of conduct?

Yes. We'll abide by the Conference Code of Conduct. Report any violations to me. (Also see the #botally Slack code of conduct.)