Open Tech Calendar

In his talk 'Alexa open seeing eye', Jon will be walking us through the creation of an Alexa skill, from planning intents and utterances through to connecting to a visual learning AI. Using C# end-to-end through .NET core and Xamarin, Jon will show how to connect Alexa to complex backend systems, including reading data from Azure and using some of its awesome shortcuts to train an AI. Not only will we have a working Alexa skill by the end of the talk, but we’ll also have trained a visual learning AI to recognise a couple of the Scottish Developers team.

About the speaker

Since co-founding award winning digital innovation practice Screenmedia 13 years ago, Jon has lead teams developing cutting edge solutions to keep his clients at the forefront of their fields. With over 18 years of commercial coding experience, he possesses vast technical knowledge of programming tools and services, and is a proactive and influential member of the open source coding community.

An active and curious developer, he can frequently be found experimenting with both hardware and software, translating his innovations into his work. His current focus is bringing machine learning, cognitive services, and natural language understanding to Screenmedia’s roster of global clients to support them in the transition to an AI first world.

Many thanks to the Department of Computing, Communications and Interactive Systems of Glasgow Caledonian University for supplying the venue.