Topic To believe the hype today, Chatbots are the new mobile app (if you dont have one, youre probably some sort of throwback to a bygone age). Weve all been told that the confluence of the explosion of the number of chat messaging platforms, the increasing amount of attention users give to messaging experiences (at the expense of other experiences), huge improvements in NLP (Natural Language Processing), & the increased efficacy of Artificial Intelligence are all combining to make chatbots the next frontier in user engagement. And yet, if all that is true, why is Facebook pulling back on its promotion of Facebook Messenger Chatbots as their own data shows up to 70% of current Facebook chatbots are considered a failure by Facebook users?

In this talk, well try to separate the hype from reality about the current (and future) state of chatbots. Through this process, well identify a series of important design considerations that can form the foundation of any successful chatbot project & explore the patterns & techniques that can help you develop a truly useful conversational experience for users of your chatbot.

Speaker Stephen Bohlen <a href="http://unhandled-exceptions.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/portait-steve-casual.jpg"></a>Currently a Principal Software Engineer for the Commercial Software Engineering (CSE) Team within Microsoft Corporation, Stephen brings his varied 20-plus-years of experience in software & technology to assist select Microsoft Partner organizations in their adoption of cutting-edge & pre-release Microsoft developer products & technologies.

Stephen is also an active contributor to several .NET Open-Source Software projects including NHibernate, Spring.NET, NDbUnit, Common.Logging, & others. Stephen is also a past Microsoft MVP award recipient, a member of the ASP Insiders & Visual C# Insiders, & formerly held the office of the Vice President of INETA, North America.

This meeting will be held at the Microsoft offices as usual. Check the Meetup site for details!