~/project/thecovid19infobot.md
The COVID-19 Info Bot
Daily case counts in Discord
- date
- August–December 2020
- type
- Side-Project
Donald Lee, with Rosa Chen, Matthew Quock, Kenny Kwan, Samuel Wu
## overview
The COVID-19 Info Bot delivers daily updates and quick, reliable answers to COVID-19 questions right inside Discord, so you can stay informed without switching apps mid-conversation.
## demo
## inspiration
Inspiration
I wanted to do something fun and productive over a quarantine summer, and I wanted COVID to end so I could see friends again. After a webinar on building Discord bots in Python, I remembered the WHO had launched a Messenger bot to fight COVID misinformation. A Discord version felt worth a shot: the more people stay informed, the more cases might drop.
## challenges
Challenges
To run the bot reliably I pulled in a few friends to build it with me. As my first Discord bot, plenty of things were new, the trickiest being a feature that pushes daily COVID updates to every server automatically, with no command needed.
## what-i-learned
What I learned
I got a taste of being a project manager and leading a project. I learned to build a Discord bot, picked up customer service experience helping users in our support server, and discovered bot directories like top.gg along the way.
## next-project
Ardio
News articles you can listen to
read the write-up