First national botathon to debut at MobileBeat 2016

We’ve committed the MobileBeat 2016 event on July 12-13 entirely to the new paradigm shift toward artificial intelligence and the conversational user interface.

The new craze around chatbots is taking over Silicon Valley.

So it’s fitting that we’ll be hosting the first nationwide botathon (yes, a national hackathon for bots), along with the other fun we’ll be having at the event, which will include an event bot that interacts with participants and manages the botathon.

The purpose of this premier national botathon is to foster innovation through a weekend of developer creativity across the country, and to recognize those creations. We’ll award the finalists on stage, and cover the winner on VentureBeat. Other US media representatives will be on hand at MobileBeat to cover the news as well.

Apply here if you’re interested in participating in the botathon by June 26.

Aside from San Francisco, we’ve also added Los Angeles, New York, and Seattle. Other cities may be announced over the coming days (contact us if you’d like to host a local botathon).

More details:

• June 26: Botathon application deadline.
• July 9-10: multi-city botathon event.
• July 10: Teams demo their work to local judges. One team from each region advances to the next stage.
• July 11-13: The selected teams will be submitted to online public voting, which determine the “online” winner.
• July 12-13: The finalists teams will also all present in front of the MobileBeat 2016 audience, and will get a booth at MobileBeat. MobileBeat attendees will also vote for the “attendees” winner. Finally, a judge panel vote for the “judges” winner.
• July 13: The winning teams will be announced at the closing party and remotely present a five-minute demo in front of all attendees.

Register here!

Incidentally, if you’re not a bot developer, but want to attend the main event, we’ve just opened the first batch of 100 tickets for the event (so get them while they last).

Stay abreast of the latest news on bots, messaging, and A.I. from MobileBeat 2016. Read our coverage here.