It’s summer now in Sydney

Mmmm, that hurts

Another contest sound GREAT

Well, Erwin, that sounds like general acclimation. Can we get together, and try to organize a chatbot competition for somewhere around June or July? I, for one, would be willing to help organize, as long as it didn’t disqualify Morti. I think that I may be able to convince some friends of mine from some of other AI forums to assist, as well.

@Wendell:

I’d like to help: we can do a lot of publicity for the winner announcement by using our SEO network. This implies we (you and our team) would write an article with the highlights from the CBC 2011 which would then be spread it over many websites and even end up on national news. It’s something we have to pay for as well and we’ll use this mechanism for other articles as well in the coming months. Costs are usally about 350 euro. I’ll offer this for free, if Chatbots.org could have the premier of the news (you can always publish the results on your own site obviously). The advantage for both you and me would be publicity. That would be a win-win wouldn’t it?

What do you think?

Erwin that sounds fine. I’m sure the winner of the CBC 2011 would appreciate the publicity.

Steve Worswick - Feb 18, 2011:

Wendell Cowart - Feb 18, 2011:

Peter Cole (sponsor) and myself (founder) can’t enter but we sure wish we could.

Fear not Wendell. I am thinking of creating a chatbot contest of my own (with a twist) possibly for the Summer. You (and indeed everyone else) will be more than welcome to enter.

Let me know if I can help publicise it Steve

I’m in on the report of whoever wins the CBC this year too.  Be sure to drop a link to any articles we can use.

Cheers

Will do Roger/Freddy. I see Robby Garner has entered the Chatterbox Challenge *gulp*. Looks the pressure is on us mere mortals now

Steve Worswick - Feb 22, 2011:

Will do Roger/Freddy.

Steve, am I mad, or are you referring to Freddy from AI Dreams? If so, “Hi, Freddy!”; but if not, well, Hi, Roger!

[edit]I just read your profile here, Roger, and I’ve let out a huge sigh of relief, since I now know that I’m not crazy. I still feel a bit stupid, of course; but at least I’m not nuts. [/edit]

@Steve, thanks and yep I think it will be a tough contest hehe.

@Dave, yes Freddy is my pseudonym and I knew you weren’t nuts

Dave Morton - Feb 19, 2011:

Well, Erwin, that sounds like general acclimation. Can we get together, and try to organize a chatbot competition for somewhere around June or July?

I’d love to organize all kind of things, Chatbots.org would like to facilitate all contests, (as long as within our scope ‘advancing humanlike conversational AI’), but we can’t do everything instantenously.

Therefore, I’ve just uploaded a Chatbots.org road map over here:
http://www.chatbots.org/admin/viewthread/382/

Organizing a well-thought contest is a lot of work and we have other priorities right now.

But I don’t want to hold your enthusiasm. If you can’t wait, please don’t hesitate to use our forums to find peers to organize a contest yourself. We’d be happy to give you all the publicity you need.

Steve, I think the stiff competition is scaring off a few botmasters. I won’t mention names but they know who they are.

Wendell - Do you the email listings for the last year’s CBC? Is it worth dropping the botmasters a line as I notice a few are missing from this year’s contest.

I also notice that AZiggyBot doesn’t have a working bot and most of the site is “not available”. I dropped them an email using the contact page to see if they needed help but it bounced back as undeliverable which doesn’t strike me as being a good sign.

Steve -  I don’t have an e-mail list from last year but a good many from previous years which I’ve sent at least one e-mail about the contest so far.

AZiggyBot is an AOL Instant Messenger Bot that has entered before. I’ve got an e-mail out to him about putting something up on his website.

It would be good to see past winners of the Loebner contest enter the CBC. This year’s contest is looking to be very competitive.

I think some people like to wait until just before the dead line.

As of the last time I looked, earlier this morning, there were 23 confirmed entrants. While I’d be a bit dismayed if 100 or more bots were entered, I’d like to see a few more bots enter. The more competitors there are, the better the “bragging rights”.

The abolition of the “no clone” rule doesn’t seem to have attracted a whole load of AIML bots from what I could see from chatting to them.