[alicebot-general] Wanted: Freelance Botmaster - paid position

[Jonathan Brody]

Poor Lucy just hasn’t been getting the kind of personal attention she
deserves lately. She needs a friend – someone who will take a personal
interest in her development and well being; someone who will help us bring
out her full potential. 

http://www1.speak2me.net/lucy/src/log_freetalk.htm 

Lucy is a general-interest Alicebot, equipped with a custom Vhost and TTS,
serving a large international body of dedicated users, especially in East
Asia. She is part of a larger initiative called Speak2Me, which combines
synchronous and asynchronous content and instruction for English language
learners. Free Talk (Lucy’s chatterbot version) is an integral part of the
program’s web-presence and will be adapted in future for data-mining and
skill-evaluation purposes. 

We are looking for an experienced botmaster to take over the day to day
operations of Free Talk, which initially involves: 

* remedial category writing to fix errors and plug holes in Lucy’s knowledge
base 
* new knowledge module planning and writing 

Initially, the botmaster will be working with a small group of “readers”
(based in Taiwan and China) who read the conversation logs and flag
potential problems. This filtered list is then passed to the botmaster for
remedial category writing. As the scale of the project picks up, the
botmaster may be responsible for recruiting additional AIML writers to aid
in category writing, integrate the new categories into the complete AIML
set, and test for bugs. The botmaster will be supported by our technical
team for server maintenance and tool development, our subject matter experts
for EFL pedagogy input, and our HR administration for managing an expanding
team of freelancers. 

You: 
* love this stuff. You really like building bots, playing with language and
observing the user-bot interaction. You’re a born tinkerer, and making a
living by building bots is a dream job for you. 
* are a highly-skilled AIML writer. You can write creative, elaborately
interconnected categories, and you keep on top of the latest developments in
the AIML community. It’s also helpful if you’re familiar with debugging AIML
for use on Program E. 
* are a genuinely delightful person – the kind of person that other people
like to talk to. With you as botmaster, Lucy will be taking on certain
aspects of your personality – it’s important that you be the kind of person
our users would want to come back to talk to again and again. A good sense
of humor goes a long way. 
* work well independently – we’ll be in daily contact through IM and email,
but this isn’t the kind of job where you get to chew the fat around the
water cooler. 
* are very organized and have good people skills. You will be working with a
small team of editors who first screen the logs for errors and other
problems. You will have to work constructively with this group and manage
their work process and the quality of their output. 
* take direction and constructive criticism well. The Lucy chatterbot is a
part of a larger whole, and development is subject to business- and
marketing-related factors which, in some cases, may take priority over
creative freedom. 
* are rock-solid reliable. When you say you’ll do something, it gets done,
and you stay cool under deadline pressure. 
* are forward thinking. This could very well be the first step towards a
career in experimental, innovative technologies for application in
e-learning with an international market leader – is this what you’re looking
for? 
* preferably live in the New York, Boston, or Toronto areas. I am based in
Taipei, but travel to these cities regularly, which would mean we can meet
for margaritas and talk shop every now and then. 

We: 
* are part of one of the largest private educational publishers in Greater
China, with over 500 R&D staff, and a sales force of over 12,000. We have
offices in Taiwan, China, Singapore, Hong Kong, Korea, Japan and Russia. 
* aggressively incorporate new communications technology in language and
content learning. 
* are a rapidly expanding, multinational team of content experts, engineers,
and marketing specialists. 
* offer flexible working arrangements. 
* are committed to developing Lucy over the long-term. 
* actively encourage professional development and offer opportunities for
staff to initiate new projects. 

Remuneration will be commensurate with experience and qualifications. Work
will be paid on a per-category basis, with specific performance bonuses. The
position will initially begin as a freelance contract but, as the program
expands, it will likely develop into a full-time salaried position with
benefits. General programming skills are preferable, but not essential for
this position – all else being equal, (human) language expertise and general
management skills would probably be more useful in this position than
hardcore hacking skills. 

Next Step: 
If you think this is for you, you need to send me your resume and a link to
your bot(s). If you don’t have a bot online, but feel that you answer the
qualifications above, you’ll need to explain your experience in considerable
detail and provide some samples of your AIML. When sending samples, please
only send your own work – we have all the open source AIML sets and will be
checking submissions against them. A cover letter is advisable – tell me why
you think you are right for this. Follow up interviews will be conducted by
email and Skype. 

Jonathan Brody 
Project Leader 
Ladder Digital Education Corp. 
Taipei, Taiwan 
jonathan at ladder.com.cn 
www.speak2me.net 
www.ladder100.com.tw 
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