we're all talking to bots these days ... but how do we make them?! and why?

this session will be a brief history of chatbots, a walk-through of some tools that you can use to make your own for SMS, voice, and web (Twilio, Landbot), and some current examples of projects & chatbots used for creative purposes. by the end of the workshop, you'll know the tools you can use to start your own bot ... to write a novel or game or opera via SMS? to build a know-your-rights training or other activism project? to interact with your art piece? to call you on the hour and ask you deep questions?

a lot of these tools are no-code or low-code engineering, so no particular experience is super-necessary; if you do code, I'll point out where customizations can be written in (and the sky's the limit). these tools are also great for rapid prototyping!

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RESOURCES:

"Corn" the chatbot: text your name, or how you want to be called, to (312) 635-5521 **this bot requires a US number! if you want to interact with it and you have an international phone number, you can use Google Voice or an app like Burner to get a US number and play with it

citations/some other bot examples: slides

Twilio Studio tutorials/documentation

Twilio documentation - a good place to learn (if you're a programmer used to looking at documentation!), for all the Twilio features + different programming languages you can use

TwilioQuest - gameified fun way to learn Twilio basics (and some programming, actually)

Landbot documentation