Experimenting with New Ideas – TeamChatThing

I’ve been toying with a few ideas on the side these days. They’ve been all over the place including even speaking with Emory University’s Department of Technology Transfers. Hey, I’m an opportunist! I go after opportunities that I can bring to fruition and that sound exciting. I don’t always have experience in these areas. However, I’m betting on myself to figure it out as I go.

One recent idea has been in the SMS chatbot world. Specifically, how managers organize teams in preparation for the next game. Typically, this is done via mass email threads or annoying group texts. Then, players delay and delay responding. Oftentimes, the emails are buried. Then, managers must find subs should not enough people say they can make the game.

I immediately thought about using text messages as the delivery mechanism. SMS, specifically, might get faster responses minus the group messages (MMS). I’ve run into the problems of being a manager plenty of times in the past. I did not do the Mom Test. Instead, my friend and I just start digging into leveraging Twilio.

The problem is not overly complicated. The problem isn’t a big world problem. I don’t know how well to monetize. All this tells me I should not pursue the idea. However, I’m pushing on.

I’m pursuing this idea called TeamChatThing as a testbed to learn more about the SMS world and what’s available. What I like about SMS (short-messaging service, or text) is that aside from emails, phone, and face-to-face interactions, SMS is the next ubiquitous communication channel. SMS is something most people are so familiar with. There’s no need to push new users to download apps.

Team management aspect is a test. I want to test people’s responses and response times. I want to test the complications of RSVP’ing – specific use case. I want to dig into what’s possible to automatically respond and record responses.

Leveraging SMS for a chatbot is challenging. SMS is a stream of linear messages. It’s near difficult to create threads, let alone a simple response-question association. (Think about when two questions are asked on SMS and a single response comes in. Which question(s) is the response to?) SMS does not have much meta-data, either. SMS provides:

Complexity builds as players, in this case, are connected to different teams. Understand which team the player is responding to is tough.

It’s a fascinating problem. I’m eager to continue digging into what’s possible and the deeper challenges with SMS.

Yes, the way service is dubbed TeamChatThing. J