Ben Brown

prostheticknowledge: Air Bonsai @kickstarter campaign from...

Sun, 24 Jan 2016 22:32:02 -0500

Air Bonsai

@kickstarter campaign from Hoshinchu to produce levitating bonsai plant arrangements, combining traditional and contemporary craft:

More Here

Photo

Sun, 24 Jan 2016 22:28:32 -0500

Hack To Start | Ben Brown, Co-Founder, XOXCO

Thu, 14 Jan 2016 15:02:20 -0500

Hack To Start | Ben Brown, Co-Founder, XOXCO

Bots are here, they’re learning — and in 2016, they might eat the web

Mon, 11 Jan 2016 17:27:48 -0500

Bots are here, they’re learning — and in 2016, they might eat the web

The Next Phase Of UX: Designing Chatbot Personalities

Mon, 11 Jan 2016 17:27:03 -0500

The Next Phase Of UX: Designing Chatbot Personalities

Sharing a tender moment with @stewartbutterfield

Wed, 16 Dec 2015 13:23:03 -0500

Sharing a tender moment with @stewartbutterfield

The Slack Platform Launch

Wed, 16 Dec 2015 02:40:00 -0500

slackhq:

We live in an exciting time for work. Instead of three or four big vendors providing end-to-end software suites, we have a variety of top notch products at our fingertips ready to make us more powerful and productive in our jobs. But all of these great products come with a small cost: the tools we use every day don’t always play well together. Progress and productivity can end up in silos instead of being reviewed and tracked by the whole team.

The Slack Platform aims to make your experience with apps even better. We know that just a fraction of improvement in everyday interactions between the business services you use makes a world of difference. And so today we’re taking a few bigs steps forward in bringing them all together.

The Slack App Directory

First up, our brand new Slack App Directory, where you can find over 160 apps that can extend the capabilities of your Slack team, sorted into curated lists by category, popularity, and staff favorites. Installation is easy—you’ll be using these new apps inside your Slack team after just a few clicks.

There are listings from a variety of categories such as design, marketing, office management, developer tools, and productivity. No matter what kind of team you’re on, we have apps ready to make your team more productive. You can even search for apps from within Slack itself, by typing /apps <keyword> to search for any app related to that <keyword> and get the 3 most popular results back in your channel.

The Slack Fund

But that’s not all: to support and encourage developers to build apps that interact with Slack, we’ve announced a new $80 million dollar fund backed by Slack and six of our investors: Accel, Andreessen-Horowitz, Index Ventures, KPCB, Spark, and Social+Capital. If you’re a developer or small company deciding whether to make a bet on the Slack platform, the Slack Fund is a new source of support to help you get started building apps. The Slack Fund will fund both “Slack-first” apps as well as B2B and enterprise tools that make Slack integrations a core part of their offering.

We expect our portfolio to feature a diverse array of entrepreneurs working on solving problems for teams in every industry, function, and corner of the world. We’ll measure the success of the Slack Fund in the quality and adoption of the apps built by Slack Fund companies and by the overall investment we see in the Slack ecosystem.

Botkit

Finally, we’re happy to announce the launch of a new framework for Slack development called Botkit by the folks at Howdy. It greatly simplifies the creation of apps (especially bots) with a flexible codebase that handles things like authenticating apps to a team and the sending, receiving, and processing of messages with our API. With Botkit, developers can stop reinventing the wheel on basic functionality and instead get a head start on writing code for what their bots actually do and how their apps interact with Slack. Botkit will also provide a simplified way for new developers to get into programming for Slack by building off the impressive collection of tools available in it.

Onwards!

There’s a lot to be excited about in these three announcements. The App Directory will become the place to find apps that let your team work smarter and faster in Slack. The Slack Fund will ensure a wide range of new apps from a variety of developers will get built and launched thanks to this new financial backing. Botkit will greatly simplify Slack programming and give us a world where a thousand bots can bloom.

Today’s announcements are both an investment into the future of Slack apps and an investment in the developers that help create these tools. We can’t wait to see what everyone does with these newfound resources.

If you’d like to begin developing apps for Slack check out our API documentation and if you’d like to learn even more our Developer blog post about the announcements has in-depth technical information.

I built Botkit!

Non Breaking Space Show #56: Ben Brown - Bots and Slack - Goodstuff FM

Thu, 12 Nov 2015 23:04:59 -0500

Non Breaking Space Show #56: Ben Brown - Bots and Slack - Goodstuff FM:

Chris and I had a wide ranging discussion of… me! Great stuff, obvs.

Howdy: Your new digital coworker for Slack!

Tue, 10 Nov 2015 19:39:52 -0500

Howdy: Your new digital coworker for Slack!:

Howdy on Product Hunt

It's bots all the way down: Howdy launches to build a better Slackbot

Tue, 10 Nov 2015 19:37:23 -0500

It's bots all the way down: Howdy launches to build a better Slackbot:

Howdy on The Next Web

This Friendly Slack Bot Will Schedule Your Meetings For You

Tue, 10 Nov 2015 19:36:59 -0500

This Friendly Slack Bot Will Schedule Your Meetings For You:

Howdy in Fast Company Design

Slack bot maker Howdy launches with $1.5M

Tue, 10 Nov 2015 19:36:19 -0500

Slack bot maker Howdy launches with $1.5M:

Howdy on Venture Beat

State of the Business Bot Economy

Tue, 10 Nov 2015 19:35:28 -0500

State of the Business Bot Economy:

Howdy mentioned by The Information.

Howdy Raises $1.5 Million From Top VCs To Develop Apps For Slack

Tue, 10 Nov 2015 19:34:50 -0500

Howdy Raises $1.5 Million From Top VCs To Develop Apps For Slack:

Howdy on Tech Crunch

Revelry Radio Ep 01: Designing & Building Slackbots

Tue, 10 Nov 2015 19:33:04 -0500

Revelry Radio Ep 01: Designing & Building Slackbots:

The nice folks at Revelry invited me to be on their first podcast ever… to talk about bots, of course!

Ep. 15 - Ben Brown of Howdy.AI — RoboPsych Podcast — Overcast

Tue, 10 Nov 2015 19:32:01 -0500

Ep. 15 - Ben Brown of Howdy.AI — RoboPsych Podcast — Overcast:

I appeared on the RoboPsych podcast and basically ranted for an hour about how cool bots are.

Notifications Summit: Session 6

Tue, 10 Nov 2015 19:29:26 -0500

Notifications Summit: Session 6:

I appear at the beginning of this video to do a demo of Howdy, which at the time of this event, was still unannounced. So this was like, a big deal.

I was invited to appear on this great panel with April Underwood...

Tue, 10 Nov 2015 19:26:33 -0500

I was invited to appear on this great panel with April Underwood from Slack and Naveen Selvadurai of Expa. It was originally broadcast live on Tech Crunch, and was later highlighted by famous venture capitalist Fred Wilson.

I appeared recently on a panel of Austin startup founders. Oh, I...

Tue, 10 Nov 2015 19:20:22 -0500

I appeared recently on a panel of Austin startup founders.

Oh, I started a startup too.

My new favorite blog

Fri, 06 Nov 2015 19:36:41 -0500

My new favorite blog