#botathon

Brainitch is coming up on its three year anniversary. No one said it would be easy, but persistence and patience has paid off. We just collaborated with MixMash Records and HANS became Laidback Luke’s bot on Facebook Messenger!

HANS’ mission was to help Luke find his biggest fans and invite them to one of his birthday parties in Amsterdam at AIR and in NYC at Marquee. In order to filter through the noise of non-true Laidback Luke fans, HANS asked users a series of questions about Luke and if they got 3 out of 5 correct they could sign up for either the Amsterdam or NYC party to win free tickets. Check out the experience here until October 22nd 2016.

Unlike email campaigns, this Messenger activation helped collect super fans that really wanted to see Luke and follow his news.

Starting a conversation with your fans is a more personal way to engage with them than requesting that they like and follow your pages. Email marketing is also dead. Are you only seeing ~10% of your lists engage? You aren’t alone! Email is no longer “personal.”

Email is too cluttered with spam and we use it mostly for business. Messaging apps, like Facebook Messenger is where we spend a majority of our time every day talking with friends, family, and now your favorite interests like Laidback Luke.

HANS will never become spammy. He is trained to only broadcast personalized news that fans opt-in for.

60% of the traffic was incoming for Laidback Luke and this will improve as HANS evolves. Fans love leaving messages, demos, and photos for Luke. He has over 1.7 million page followers and HANS manages all of the communications in Messenger with its efficient architecture.

Laidback Luke’s Messenger experience was a success and Luke’s birthday bash guest lists are filled up with super fans who deserve a free show!

Botathon 1.0

I was recently asked to lead the efforts behind a 2 day hackathon, which I ended up successfully executing within 4 weeks so it could be included in the Innovate LA event lineup.

I love organizing events and bringing people together, but I hadn’t coordinated a hackathon before, so I was up to the challenge. Ariel Jalali CEO of Sensay and his team had already done some planning and had started the conversations with sponsors, so to get started I had to find a venue, secure a date, and then contact the leads at each company who verbally committed to sponsoring the event.

What happened next would go down in history as the first Botathon in Los Angeles that brought our tech community together and served multiple purposes! We had over 150 registrants and 100 people showed up over two days. I secured 15 sponsors & community partners, arranged an inspiring keynote by Dr. Julie Albright on “Untethered Intelligence”, and we had 12 teams present their final projects.

Four teams walked away as winners with prizes like an Oculus Rift and free consultation from Norwest Venture Partners, a Phantom Quadcopter Drone and free consultation from Amplify.la, Amex Gift Cards, and Bose Bluetooth Speakers.

I partnered with LA’s BEST, a non-profit after school enrichment program that serves 25,000 elementary school students across Los Angeles every school day. With the support of our sponsors and attendees we were able to raise over $2000 to help improve LA’s BEST digital learning programs.

Impact Hub LA in the Arts District of downtown LA was an awesome host and provided teams rooms to really brainstorm ideas.

Organizing this event was a gratifying experience working with volunteers, vendors, and sponsors. I believe every sponsored event should partner with a local non-profit to help raise awareness and support. It’s 2016 and we shouldn’t be throwing boring events without a purpose anymore.  

What I have learned from throwing this epic event will only help me with my future endeavors, which leads me to my upcoming business trip…

Amsterdam

I’m going to Amsterdam and attending ADE, the biggest EDM conference in the world. This event attracts over 350k people and the city practically turns into the largest dance club.

I’ll be checking out Laidback Luke’s Birthday bash at AIR Amsterdam on the 18th and then I have meetings throughout the week. Hoping to check out some museums, but I know this is the beginning of some beautiful friendships and I will be back again with more time planned to explore.

If you’ll be in Amsterdam October 18-21 let me know so we can meet up.

This is only the beginning, but I know that I want to travel the world and work with hardworking, talented people to develop valuable experiences for the rest of my life.

David Bowie RIP, has inspired me to be more than human. I hope you join me on this journey, I promise it won’t be boring!