Yesterday, the 28th, was the first ever Agentic Arena New York put on by n8n. n8n, pronounced Nodemation (n[8 removed characters]n), is a German tech company located in Berlin that just received a $2.3Bn valuation. Think of it like a much more capable Zapier or Make.
In an effort to raise awareness for their awesome brand, n8n point man, The Original Flowgrammer, Max Tkacz (@maxT) hosted a head-to-head competition to build an Ai agent between two prominent voices in the Ai automation space.
The tête-à-tête pit the one and only Jack Roberts against the great Nate Herk (@NateHerk) in a battle of mind, tactic and of course show business. Now before I share anymore I have to tell you that I am bound by a FrienDA to not share the winner - and I won’t. The show airs on Sept 5 and all will be revealed then.
The competition was scored by evaluations, a new feature introduced in n8n core that in essence holds your Ai automations accountable according to some “truth”. Think of it like a teacher scoring a student’s work against the known, correct answers. Then Jack and Nate’s agentic workflows were evaluated against correct answers.
There was a robot involved, a real, well…not live, but operational and walking robot. The robot was asked a question, not previously known to Jack and Nate, and the contestants’ agentic workflows were triggered to process the question, research, and deliver an answer. The answer was then voiced by the robot. I’m not kidding. Voice trigger, remote workflow, speaking robot…all wired up wirelessly togerther, on the net. The robot took a step forward for correct answers. Whichever contestant got the robot to walk a set distance in the shorter time was the winner. And the robot was pushed down or kicked for wrong answers.
I found this unfair; it would be much more fair if the robot could fight back.
Well the competition was fierce. And both Jack and Nate’s performances were TOP. All in all, it was a super fun experience and I met a load of cool geniuses.
Mods - I had no idea how to categorize this article, please feel free to do with it as you want @bartv