Event Organiser Bot

Inspiration

My friends definitely inspired me to create this type of a bot. We struggle to find times that can work with everyone and it turns into a huge messy string of messages that end up not being able to be resolved cleanly. Because of this, I searched around and found a lot of bots that organise events and calendars but none of them really combine all of their unique traits together to create the ultimate event organiser bot.

What it does

The Event Organiser Bot allows for users to be able to organise their events in a clean and concise manner. Users will be able to react to each event that an event host organises and thus be able to create an RSVP list with minimal discussion between peers. The bot also allows for users to have a brief overview of events that may be happening with the next few days, weeks or even months!

How it was built

This bot was coded on replit using discord.py. Mainly using discord's api, I was able to utilise slash commands and other various discord features such as embeds and reactions into this bot. Another useful utilisation was unix timestamps which would allow for users to be able to view event times in their own timezone.

Challenges/Obstacles

Some challenges I ran into was working with discord's new api. While I had started learning how to code using discord.py almost 2 years ago, I hadn't really delved much into the scene of discord.py after my first bot was made in a few weeks. Because of that, I found myself a bit confused as to how discord.py functioned as the normal methods/functions I was used to using ended up becoming scrapped in the new version of discord.py. Regardless, I found myself following the classic marine corps technique of "improvise, adapt, overcome" and achieve something quite knowledgeable out of it.

Accomplishments

Linking back to the challenges, I'm quite proud of being able to really delve into a whole new world of discord.py in 24 hours. I think quite a few people would like to stick with their old roots and stay in their comfort zone when coding under such strict time pressures but I'm quite proud of myself for wanting to explore more about this style of programming and all the changes that had come with it.

What I learned

Outside of the new programming abilities I gained over the course of this hackathon, I learned quite a lot about planning, the importance of sleep, the levels of creativity that I had and also pushing my limits. While this may be unrelated to the bot that I built, I do want to mention that I learned quite a lot about how to host a workshop and keep an audience engaged. I really went outside of my comfort zone when presenting about something that I was passionate about and I came out of it with more experience in leadership as well as public speaking. I learnt not only about parts related to programming but about myself and what I am capable of.

What's next for Event Organiser Bot

I'm planning quite a lot of things for this bot regardless of the outcome of this hackathon. I hope to be able to continue this project as I see potential in it. I want to be able to create a UI that makes the usage of slash commands much easier for the user as well as fixing up a few things to do with timezones. In addition, I would also like to explore the idea of more interaction between the user and the bot where if the user is unsure about whether they would like to attend or not, then they would be able to suggest their own time and that would be added onto the pre-existing event embed.

Built With

• discord.py
• python