Category: open data

Chatbots and AI – #CTC8

Code the City #8, which will take place in on Sat 25th to Sunday 26th February 2017, will be an exploration of the world of chatbots and AI (or Artificial Intelligence), identifying problems to tackle and quickly prototyping solutions.

>>> Book a ticket on our  Eventbrite page 

What are chat bots?

A chatbot is a piece of software that interacts with a customer or user to directly answer their questions. It uses existing data or information coupled with artificial intelligence to respond in a human-like way, guiding the user to a solution.

There are many examples of live chat bots in this exciting, emerging field. A chatboat could give you travel directions, tell you when its next going to rain in your area, or help you contest parking tickets. It could book you a flight and hotel, or act as a free lawyer to help the homeless get housing . The HBO series Westworld has even launched a bot to help you interact with the (fictional) holiday park!

If you are new to this field and want to get started we suggest you read the Complete Beginners Guide to Chatbots (and some of the links at the end of this article).

Example Travel Bot
Example Travel Bot
Example Waste Bot
Example Waste Bot

How will the weekend run?

We’ll apply our usual  Code The City methodology:

  • Bring together a diverse range of people from various backgrounds, to form teams.
  • Identify problems that we’d like to apply chatbots to solve.
  • Identify approaches,  information and data, to guide how we develop the bots and train them
  • Mix academic thinking, and user need, with open source technology and open data to develop new services
  • Iterate quickly through approaches, testing ideas, failing quickly and refining our approaches.
  • Prototype and demonstrate solutions to an interested audience

Who should attend?

  • Service owners – and service providers
  • Academics and students in the field of chatbots and artificial intelligence
  • Coders
  • Data specialists
  • Front-end and UX designers
  • Bloggers and social media practitioners
  • Anyone with an interest in getting involved in creating bots even for fun!

What you will do?

You will create mixed teams to workshop chatbot solutions to real world issues.  Maybe these will building on the outputs of previous work we’ve done at CodeTheCity. Through rapid prototyping you will create new applications and have some fun in the process.

We’ll show you new techniques for service design, idea generation, prototyping, and rapid iterative application development – and you will show other participants some tricks and approaches, too. We’ll share knowledge and learning.

You might even get a Tshirt, and we can guarantee the best catering of any weekend workshop in the city!

To book a free ticket visit our Eventbrite page   But be quick, tickets will go swiftly!

All attendees will get a year’s free membership of the Open Data Institute.

You can find out more about the previous events on tumblr, on the eventifier, and on flickr.

If you have any questions please get in touch.

How can I support this event?

If you are interested in sponsoring this event please, or providing other support such as access to online tools or services, please  get in touch.

Useful Articles and Resources

>>> Book a ticket on our  Eventbrite page

Journeygrid

“We should build one for here!”

So starts another Codethecity conversation on discovering a neat data driven tool. This time it’s the excellent New York subway toy created by Jason Wright.

Brand_New_Subway

The tool allows you to redesign transit provision in the city by building new subway routes. By adding new stations. By removing or moving existing lines.

It’s addictive and fascinating.

As is so often the case, we then start riffing on what it could also do. It could time travel using that tram data we have from the early 1900s. It could give alternate route options if we hook up to that academic project we spoke with earlier in the year. It could carbon count. It could give safety information for cyclists. We could data collect with a new app to feed it improved validation data…

Before we have the cake we’re discuss how pretty the icing will look.

In reality what we should be looking at is the bottom layer. The underpinnings.  The data.

Where do people live? Where do they work? Where do they school run? Where is the football stadium and where do the fans live? Where are the shops and where is the money?

We’re going to start with the commute. Where do people start, spend, and end their day? How do they move around? And when? No agenda. No grand insights planned. Just a good solid data gathering and modelling project.

We’re calling it journeygrid.

journeygrid open data transportation project

If you have any data, or methodologies for gathering and storing such data we’d love to speak to you.

You can find out more about the New York Subway project here, and you can play with it here.

Tourism Hack – Perth – TBC

PLEASE NOTE – Due to low take-up this event has been postponed. We are sorry for any inconvenience this will cause. 

Perth wants to boost its tourism offer and wants some help!. They want to see whether some well developed apps could help the city and its wider area bring attractions, trails, events, culture,accommodation, eateries; and activities to life.

They are also interested in bringing the quirky and interesting aspects of the city together, using great images and interesting user generated content through social media.

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They have developed the website http://www.perthcity.co.uk/ and there is an app (http://www.mi-perthshire.co.uk/ ) but want some creative minds to take a fresh look at the city and surrounding area, generate new ideas that they could then develop into some new apps, open data or other projects.

As always we’re looking for coders, designers, data wranglers, service users and providers, bloggers – in fact anyone with an interest – to join us for a weekend of ideation, creation, open data and rapid prototyping.

We’ll feed you, keep you stimulated, and provide good wifi. You will leave with a sense of accomplishment, new skills and potentially new friends.

Accommodation.

We’ve uploaded a list of hotels in this Perth City Accommodation List.

In addition there are a cluster of B&BS on Dunkeld Road.

Also, just outside the city itself, The Lodge at the Perth Racecourse are offering a flat rate of £90 per night in a Double or Twin bedded room (£45 per person), which also includes a full breakfast. See  http://perthlodge.co.uk/dining

New Code the City dates set

We’ve set the dates for the next three Code The City events. Please add these to your diaries. Bookings will open soon.

Code The City #7

Dates: Saturday 19th  – Sunday 20th November 2016
Location: Aberdeen University (tbc)
Theme: Health
More info /  Tickets

Code The City #8

Dates: Saturday 25th  – Sunday 26th February 2017
Location: Aberdeen University
Theme:  Chatbots and AI
More info /  Tickets

Code The City #9

Dates: Saturday 13th  – Sunday 14th May 2017
Location: Aberdeen University
Theme:  Transport (tbc)
Further details to follow.

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The following event will be rescheduled:

Code The City #Perth

Dates: TBC in 2017
Location: Perth College UHI
Theme: Tourism