Second BotCon Africa takes place this week [Sponsored]

BotCon Africa returns on 25 May for what is expected to be another sell-out conference dedicated to the state and future of conversational interfaces in Africa.

Following on from the highly successful inaugural conference held in Johannesburg in November last year, this year’s event will take place in Cape Town on Thursday 25 May 2017 at Workshop 17 at the V&A Waterfront.

BotCon Africa is essential for software developers, businesses and marketers working with natural language processing, machine learning and AI, offering a chance to interact with top-end experts and peers.

Last year’s sold-out event drew over 130 participants and featured speakers like Emeka Afigbo of Facebook, who spoke on Messaging Apps as the New Platform; Simon de Haan from Praekelt.org on Bots for social impact; Ashvin Sologar from Kalido on natural language processing and Retro Rabbit’s Jade Abbot talking about word embedding, recommendation systems and open source tools.

The 2017 conference will place a greater emphasis on the African market, and will include speakers from across the continent. The conference will feature commercial success stories, brand opportunities and social impact stories, as well as the technology that makes it all possible.

This year’s event will see the likes of Facebook AI researcher Martin Raison, Botpress founder Dany Fortin-Simard, WhereIsMyTransport’s Nick Cuthbert and several other prominent speakers.

The technical talks and interactive workshops that proved popular at BotCon Africa 2016 are again a highlight of this year’s event, allowing developers to get to grips with building chatbots, machine learning and other supporting paradigms.

BotCon Africa is not just for software developers. It’s a chance to connect with business leaders, data scientists, product designers, technologists and industry innovators who are changing the face of interfaces.

Make sure you are at Workshop17  to explore the wide world of conversational interfaces and the impact they can have on businesses and lives in Africa.

For more information or online bookings visit www.botconafrica.com or email info@botconafrica.com. BotCon 2017 is brought to you by Retro Rabbit, Praekelt.com’s Feersum Engine and Facebook for Developers.