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The SmartBots Q&A Conference (2019-08-22) transcript

SmartBots Blog August 23, 2019 by Glaznah Gassner

Hello there!

Yesterday we were holding a first Q&A Conference. This was a cool experience for us and everything went really great. We’ve talked with you in public, then I had several conversation in private IMs. Thank you everyone for coming!

The transcript of the public session is below, with the minimal changes. I believe we will hold the similar events in the future, too! I’ve just liked it, and you may have known a bit more about the project you love \(•◡•)/

Happy reading!

“SmartBots: group invitation bots” group, August 22nd 2019

[08:59] Lance Swain: Group Notice Sent by: Lance Swain
SmartBots Q&A with CEO Glaznah Gassner
Good morning, friends! Please join us in the group chat for our Q&A!
Coffee and Vodka not provided!

[09:04] Glaznah Gassner:
So, here we are and we do start the Q&A
For those who is not aware, we are starting the Questions&Answers session here. Read more here – Read more – bit.ly/2P8l61U

Of course I have some texts prepared. However, I will re-type them, so there’s a kind of improvisation still. Few words about SmartBots. We’ve launched it in 2010 – almost 10 years ago. It started with a simple group inviter… and no bots. I still have no idea why I called it “SmartBots” while selling group invitation service lol

However, we’ve added the “personal bot” service in 2011 and it turned to be true SmartBots. We’ve lost some customers because of the that name, tho. Some people I was talking to said “NO BOTS IN MY SECOND LIFE” and never got back to me. Anyway, today (in 9 years of development) we are the largest bot hosting in Second Life. We host about 4 thousands of bots, and serve about 10 thousands of SL groups.

Our great team is supporting this stuff: support crew, developers, pr and marketing. There are 15 team members now. This is not that much for a real life, but we are the huge company in SL. And I’m really proud to have such great people working with me.

[09:13] Norsk: quality, not quantity matters more

[09:13] Glaznah Gassner:
By the way, you are welcome to join us – check our Careers page here http://bit.ly/2KNZdkf. Yeah, the quality matters. Especially in SL where people can disappear, stop working, abuse customers because of strange reasons etc.

[09:15] Gypsy Fairfield . . . Mrs B (imgypsy): YOU have the best team – always helpful and point on

[09:15] Winterhart DragonKin (winterharte): and they have a sense of humor lol

[09:16] Glaznah Gassner:
We have a core of the very devoted people at SmartBots. And getting new team members every month, too. The most of new members exit in a month or two, but the people who stay are really brilliant.

Our only weakness – the salesmen. We love doing the job we do, we love developing it and love our customers. But we don’t have people who really __love__ selling. We do this but we could to it better lol. So the reliability and quality our main sales force. I have a real life company, and work with salesmen there. But you never can explain Second Life to someone who does not use Second Life – so I can’t get them working here. Second Life is a very special world. I bet you know that too

I keep looking for sales professionals here. Drop me a word if you know someone lol

Okay, back to our service. And the recent Big Crash.

I really sorry about this. We have a 120-hours working day because if it, starting from Friday 16th. Here’s more info if you did not read it yet – http://bit.ly/2zipH77. We’ve finally managed to fix all the issues and recovered all the bots. There may be some subscription durations issues (like few bot subscription days missing), but we fix them manually

I would like to say a special appreciation to Lance Swain who was leading our support team these days. And arranged all issues you faced. While me in person and other developers were recovering, comparing and restoring the information from all sources we have.

[09:24] Lance Swain: *waves a paw*

[09:24] Glaznah Gassner:
The first question is about this crash:

>> Was the tech who screwed it all up fired? If not were there any consequences for his serious mistake?
Yes, the person was fired. This wasn’t our tech, but the data center’s one. As a result, we are changing the data center (still moving the servers, we have a dozen there). They lost a 10-years customer, and tech lost his job.

>> Which bots are your personal favor?
I love bots doing the complex things: like walking, receiving data, processing them in unusual way and doing something as the result. It is quite hard to create a complex bot which is popular for a lot of people, but we try. But, actually, we prefer creating bot development tools, so people make their own complex bots and sell them.

The next question is very close to the previous one:

>> When do we see more 18+ adult bots?
((a quite long pause))
I’m thinking what to reply lol

Okay, the most direct reply is that we are not an adult industry pro’s. We could create something unusual, but I really don’t know what would be the most popular adult bot in SL. Thus, we prefer doing the job we know: giving an ability to control bots. And some people create a rather strange stuff. Like sex coffins with a bot inside. Or escort girls. Hope I did replied to the question lol

>> How much bots there are at SmartBots?
We now have about 4 thousands active bots, with 2-3 thousands being online.

[09:39] BlackRaven Direwytch (lesleyash) looks suspiciously at her own bot pretty sure that it is still plotting

[09:39] Glaznah Gassner:
>> Do you provide bots for other grids, besides SL?
We have bots for other grids, and able to host them. However, all other grids are significantly smaller than SL.

It is quite complex story to build set up payment terminals, an office and such. I was looking for a person or company to become a representative in some other grid, but there’s seems nobody. So we’ve gave up on this, and concentrate on SL.

>> I want to control bots from mobile. Any plans?
Yes and no. We’ve actually started developing the website to control bots from mobile.

But developing it we’ve realized that we are creating a full-scale SL viewer. Thus, we’ve ended up with a first web viewer for SL: https://speedlight.io

It is not officially announced yet, but I’m writing these words from it :) It is not possible to run viewer solely in a web browser, so we use servers to run the heavy processing. SpeedLight is a commercial viewer because of this.

Returning back to SmartBots, we plan to integrate SpeedLight with SmartBots sometimes. So you can login your main avatar there, add your bots and switch between them. Right from a mobile phone.

>> The question about integrating with Gridtalke, Nexus and SL comminucation systems
We just have no person who works with these systems in SL. We try to add features which will be used by the most of users, and always lack time to do such tools. Sorry about this. We may discuss this in person more thoroughly

>> How does it work if you want multiple bots. Does it cost 479L a week for each bot?
Each bot at SmartBots is hosted on one of our servers. Bot consumes the CPU and memory, receives the data from SL and saves them.

So yes, each bot costs L$479 per week.

We’ve designed “lightweight” bots, Model ones. These bots can’t process the group messages and do similar work, so they are just consume less server powers. They cost L$179 per week, this may be a good solution if you need more bots

>> Your close future plans?
Currently we spend all our time developing https://speedlight.io. I use it myself every day, we often use it for SmartBots support. So, the most of new features will appear there within the next month or two. Then we will get back to SmartBots to implement new ideas we’ve got.

We also have a new feature for SmartBots, a message forwarder. A tiny tool which allows forwarding messages to avatars and messengers A kind of interface between Second and real life. We love creating such interfaces.

>> How much does the CSR job pay?
This is better to discuss with your support team leader if you are interested. The payments are hourly-based.

[10:00] Glaznah Gassner:
Okay, I seem to answer all questions I’ve got. Poke me if I did missed something. I will compose a kind of document with these questions and answers and publish it. You can send me your questions to get added here.

May be we’ll hold another conference in a while. I believe that a lot of users just missed the blog, email, notice and group IM lol

[10:10] Kry (kryalana): I have a question about speedlight. It says it keeps avatar on 24/7. Does that mean I can shut down my computer and still have avi online?

[10:11] Glaznah Gassner: kryalana, yes. You can leave it running 24/7 and connect whenever you need. From any device: you can start on desktop and check messages from mobile in few hours later.

[10:11] Kry (kryalana): woot woot My AFK doll thanks you very much

[10:11] Glaznah Gassner:
Oh, I’ve forgot the most important part of the Q&A session!
Use this coupon while prolonging your bots: QNASESSIONBONUS. It gives 30% bonus to the subscription you buy. For example, buy 2 weeks get 5 days more

Bye, thanks for listening, and have a good day!

 

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