This is the Meet The Staff Panel and AMA, which was part of our 6th Anniversary Celebrations and occured on 14th December 2022.

Speakers at this event were:

- nom, currently Moderator, former Contributor and part of the team for over 2 years!

- Spoder, a recent addition to our Bot Reviewer team!

00:00:00 - Welcome to the Meet The Staff Panel!
00:00:37 - Introductions
00:02:20 - The Format

Questions:

00:03:04 - How did you discover Top.gg?
00:04:45 - Why did you get involved in Top.gg?
00:06:50 - What do you like to do outside of Top.gg?
00:08:21 - What is the most interesting bot you've reviewed?
00:10:04 - How much time do you spend on Top.gg per week?
00:12:01 - Do you have any recommendations of tips for people who are interested in applying as a Bot Reviewer?
00:14:21 - Do you have your own bots?

Individual questions:

00:16:53 - [for Spoder] What was the interviewing and trialing period as a Bot Reviewer for you?
00:18:05 - [for nom] What is your favorite part of being a Bot Reviewer Mentor?
00:19:36 - [for Spoder] Where did your username come from?
00:21:38 - [for nom] What was mentoring Spoder like?
00:22:10 - [for nom] Can you explain what a Mentor does?
00:23:49 - [for Spoder] What is your least favorite type of bot to review?
00:24:53 - What is your favorite music?

AMA Questions:

00:27:05 - [Dominik] What is the most valuable lesson that you've learned during your time at Top.gg?
00:29:04 - [Depthify] How are you able to manage a so large community?
00:31:21 - [null] What are your opinion's on the Rust programming language?
00:32:07 - [Family friendly] What is your opinion on motor busses?
00:32:30 - [burbur] What is your opinion on Snuttig? (The IKEA polar bear)
00:34:05 - [Nicole] Who is the stinkies staff member?
00:35:07 - [big bun] What is your favorite musical?
00:36:07 - [big bun] What is your absolute favorite bot on Top.gg?
00:37:28 - [Potta] Best advice to get more users on your bot or server?
00:40:12 - [null] What is the meaning of life?
00:40:37 - [Nicole] Who owns the real Smulan?
00:42:33 - [Igor] What is your favorite food?
00:43:35 - The Pizza Tangent
00:45:25 - [Hixie] What is your favorite experience while being on the Staff Team?
00:47:36 - [Porta] What is your favorite emoji?
00:48:18 - [Green Dude 2H] What is the best suggestion you can give for future bot developers?
00:51:07 - [Hixie] What is your favorite food to eat on a cold winter's night?
00:52:59 - [Green Dude 2H] What are some things that inspire you to not give up?
00:54:13 - [Lai] What is one useful update that you wish Discord would do?
00:55:34 - [Special] Does Vote Locks even help or are they harmful?
00:57:12 - [Green Dude 2H] Do you have any places you would love to travel to?
00:58:44 - [Family Friendly] What was your dream job when you were a kid?
01:00:05 - Is soup a food or a drink?

01:01:15 - Closing Remarks

This is the third edition of our Top.gg Bot Developer Panel, which was part of our 6th Anniversary Celebrations!

Part of this panel were:

• Hoss, Owner of Bake.gg (25k servers)
  https://top.gg/bot/824029844496056364
• Kodyline, Owner of Chatsight (1.4k servers)
  https://top.gg/bot/957403656091746384
• NathanL, Owner of Double Counter (260k servers)
  https://top.gg/bot/703886990948565003 
• Crawl, Maintainer of the discord.js Libraray (17 million downloads/year)
  https://discord.js.org 
• LeMorrow, Owner of Needle (4k servers)
  https://top.gg/bot/878399831238909952

Due to technical difficulties, this recording is missing the first three minutes of the panel.

Timestamps:

00:00:00 - Introductions
00:08:39 - How today's event works

Questions:

00:08:54 - Tell us about your bot and why you created it?
00:15:12 - If you can't chose your own bot, what's your favorite bot?
00:20:29 - In your opinion, what is the biggest misconception about being a bot developer?
00:25:07 - As a bot developer you have to do many jobs throught development, how has your personal experience been in doing so?
00:31:11 - Have you considered branching out to other platforms than just Discord?
00:37:34 - As your bot has grown, how has it been scaling your project?
00:43:50 - What do you think is the secret ingredient to your project's growth?
00:51:04 - What has been a challenging time working with your community?

Panelist-specific questions:

00:57:33 - [Crawl] How do you keep your library up-to-date without too many breaking changes on a short turnaround?
01:00:00 - [Hoss] What advice would you give to bot developers trying to improve their economy system?
01:01:48 - [Kodyline] What role do you think AI will play in Discord server moderation in the future?
01:04:55 - [Nathan] How do you see the future of keeping servers safe?
01:06:43 - [LeMorrow] What made you want to use threads in this way? Anything else you'd like to see from the Discord API in the future?

Open AMA:

01:10:28 - [Syjalo for Crawl] Will there be a official discord.js framework?
01:11:21 - [Family friendly] How do you consistently find motivation to support your bots for years over time?
01:13:37 - [Timeless for Crawl] Should you rely on discord.py for really big projects?
01:14:42 - [Fellintron for Nathan] What algorithm is being used by Double Counter in order to detect alts?
01:15:45 - [Past for Crawl] Do you think you have personally influenced young users to pick up developing bots as an hobby?
01:16:45 - [Johand] How well do you think Discord is communicating their changes and have they recently gotten worse or better?
01:19:27 - [Emir] Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
01:21:20 - [Official] Which advice would you give to users that want to start bot developing but don't know where to do so?
01:24:20 - [big bun] What is your opinion on the newest features on Discord?

01:29:10 - One last piece of advice for bot developers?

01:30:25 - Closing off / Shoutouts

This is the first part of our Build-A-Bot event, in which we allowed you to ask questions in a Twitter space.

Hosts of this panel were:

- iara, Creator of Mimu

- Mac, Creator of PixxieBot

Chapters:

00:00 - Introductions

01:30 - How hard is it to be a solo developer?

05:56 - Overview of the Build-a-bot Event

O&A:

07:46 - [Krypton] What would you do differently now, compared to when you had less experience?

13:04 - [Quintenvw] What's your biggest frustration when it comes to the Discord API?

14:44 - [DanielGolan] What are your recommendations with languages and libraries for Discord Bot Development?

18:09 - [Krypton] Why spend so much time developing Discord bots and not e.g. Twitter bots?

19:49 - [Jadejaguar] What is one of the biggest issues/bugs that you've encountered while developing your bot and how did you overcome it?

22:00 - [Goseale] How do you handle such a high amount of bot usage without it slowing down?

24:44 - [Goseale] On a scale from 0 (not painful) to 10 (extreme pain), how would you rate the switch to slash commands?

27:21 - [Artinis] Do you believe there will be a benefit to using both normal and slash commands?

29:40 - [Winfinity] How would you rate Ruby when it comes to building with the Discord API on a scale of 1 (hell no) to 10 (amazing, i love it)?

30:22 - [Krypton] When you started, was it more of a fun project to discover new technologies or did you want to be popular and successful from the get go?

35:11 - [Spoder] Do you ever get worried that the users of your bot get bored of it?

38:49 - [JbPlays] What are steps to gain intellectual rights to your property (e.g. bot assets)?

42:30 - [Spoder] How do you go about pricing premium features for your bot?

46:34 - [Spoder] What is your daily routine look like? How much time do you invest into yourself compared to your bot?

49:14 - [Igor] Do you like chocolate cake?

50:46 - [LV] How do you decide about which type of bot to develop?

51:14 - [Spoder] When would you suggest to start scaling your bot?

54:50 - [Pufferus] How would you suggest getting your bot more out there, if your SEO is non-existent and budget is limited?

59:17 - [Neo] What do you think about the statement "Most Discord bots are becoming useless" regarding Discord adding new features?

01:03:05 - Closing off