My session was part of Austin Forum on Technology and Society’s third annual AI April, a month of presentations, events, and podcasts dedicated to AI capabilities, applications, future impacts, challenges, and more.
Here are links to the video and supplementary material for the presentation:
You can register for next Tuesday’s Civo Navigate Local Tampa 2024 conference, happening at Armature Works, for the low, low price of TEN DOLLARS with this discount code…
Civo Navigate Local Tampa is a one-day version of Civo’s 2-day Navigate conferences, with a stronger focus on local organization and techies. It will feature four topic categories…
Cloud Native
AI/ML
Emerging Tech
Thought Leadership
…over two tracks:
A main stage track with panels and presentations, and
A workshop track with lightning talks and workshops
Want to know what Civo’s two-day conference is like? Here’s a video summary of the most recent one, held in Austin in February:
At the upcoming Civo Navigate Local Tampa (taking place Tuesday, April 16 at Armature Works), I will be giving a 15-minute lightning talk on RAG — Retrieval-Augmented Generation — and how you can use it to make your AI apps produce better results.
And by “better,” I mean:
Able to use data that’s newer than their last update
Incorporating information that they wouldn’t otherwise have
Using the content of a document that you provide
Able to incorporate data from a database
And yes, there will be Python code, which I’ll run live for your viewing pleasure, explain for your understanding, and give to you for your own use!
My presentation will be one of several that you’ll be able to catch at Civo Navigate Local Tampa, and best of all, you can register for the conference for the low, low, low price of…
Next Tuesday, April 2nd at 6:15 p.m. Central / 7:15 p.m. Eastern / 23:15 UTC, I’ll lead an online introductory session for people who to dive into AI titled AI: How to Jump In Right Away.
My session is part of Austin Forum on Technology and Society’s third annual AI April, a month of presentations, events, and podcasts dedicated to AI capabilities, applications, future impacts, challenges, and more.
My presentation will start with a brief history of AI, as well as the general principles of how “old school” AI works versus “new school” AI…
…but we’ll quickly dive into building Sweater or No, a quick little AI application that tells you if you should wear a sweater, based on your current location. Here’s a screenshot of some of the code we’ll build:
This is a FREE online session, so you don’t have to be in Austin to participate. I’m not in Austin, but Tampa Bay, and you can join in from anywhere!
A hackathon is a competitive event where people with a technology bent — typically developers, designers, and other tech enthusiasts — form teams that work to build a software prototype (which can also include some hardware) that solves a problem or accomplishes a goal within a limited amount of time (typically ranging from a few hours to a couple of days).
Think of it as a pressure cooker of skill and creativity, where teams of participants brainstorm, code, design, test, and refine their creations in a race against the clock — and other teams! Collaboration and innovation are key, as participants huddle around laptops, sketch pads, and whiteboards, exchanging ideas, troubleshooting, and iterating rapidly to refine their solutions. Mentors and industry experts are often available to provide guidance and feedback, adding another layer of learning and networking to the experience. At the end of the event, teams present their projects to a panel of judges or the entire audience, showcasing their ingenuity, technical prowess, and presentation and problem-solving skills.
To use the words of the organizers, Tampa Devs, “It’s one part party, one part work-your-butt-off overnight battle against the clock and the competition.”
What will participants be building at BayHacks 2024?
This hackathon doesn’t have a theme, so participants can build any kind of software/hardware project they want.
However, they don’t have a lot of time to build. Building time starts at 12 noon on Saturday and stops at 2:00 p.m. on Sunday, followed by project presentations, judging, and the awarding of prizes.
Do I have to participate, or can I just be a spectator?
Space is limited, so there isn’t room for spectators. If you attend, you must participate in a project!
Opening ceremonies, explanation of format, and other announcements
11:00 a.m.
Team formation
11:30 a.m.
Pitching proposals
12:00 p.m.
The work begins!
5:00 p.m.
You don’t have to stop, but you have to exit the venue.
Sunday, February 25th
Time
What”s happening
10:00 a.m.
Participant check-in
10:30 a.m.
The work continues!
2:00 p.m.
Teams present their projects
3:00 p.m.
Judging and the awarding of prizes
5:00 p.m.
End of the event
Did you mention prizes?
Yes, there are prizes. Cash prizes, in fact…
Place
Cash prize amount
1st
$750
2nd
$500
3rd
$250
How are projects judged?
They’ll be judged on the following criteria:
Quality and innovative nature of the idea / demo
Utility of the idea / demo
UI / UX design
Who are the judges?
They’re prominent members of the Tampa Bay tech community held in high esteem. You may recognize one of them:
That’s right, I’m a judge. So impress me!
How do you register for BayHacks 2024?
Register for BayHacks 2024 at the BayHacks 2024 Eventbrite page. It costs $10 to register, but that $10 helps cover the costs of running the hackathon and also gets you the official T-shirt, swag bag, andSpa a single entry into the pre-event raffle for a pair of Tampa Bay Lightning tickets.
It’s only day one of the new year and I just fulfilled one of my resolutions: to land a conference speaking session on AI outside my usual stomping grounds. I’m going to be a speaker at Civo Navigate North America, which takes place on February 20th and 21st in Austin, Texas!
What’s Civo Navigate, and what is Civo?
What’s Civo Navigate, you ask? Here’s a one-minute video that answers your question:
Civo is a cloud hosting provider based on Kubernetes, with a focus on developer-friendliness and wallet-friendliness. It’s a refreshing change from this state of affairs:
I met the people at Civo last year when they held Civo Navigate North America in Tampa — and not in a convention center or hotel conference rooms, but at Tampa’s big riverside food hall, Armature Works! Here’s the promo for that event:
The 2023 edition of Civo Navigate North America was a great conference with interesting talks and a warmer, more personal “feel” than a typical vendor-hosted event. Civo’s contributions continued long afterward, with their being great supporters of the Tampa Bay tech scene and this blog.
I’m looking forward to the 2024 edition in Austin?
What’s my talk about?
My talk is titled You’re not too late to the A.I. party, and it’s for people who’ve been too busy with their actual work to get into AI and have been feeling increasing amounts of FOMO.
Here’s the description of the talk, with additional AI-generated photos (that are deep in the uncanny valley):
Have you been too busy getting your actual work done to join the artificial intelligence party and feel that you’ve already missed out on the technical career opportunity of a lifetime? If you answered “yes,” this talk is for you.
The good news is that you’re not too late to the A.I. party. It’s just getting started and you arrived at a good time — perhaps even “fashionably late!” You just need someone to take you around the room and make some introductions.
To help you “work the room” as you enter the party, you’ll get an overview of artificial intelligence technologies, from the rules-based models and expert systems of A.I.’s early days to the present era of neural networks, machine learning, transformers, and large language models.
This party won’t be limited to just hand-waving small talk in the living room. We’ll go into the kitchen — the true heart of any party — and look at actual code in action. We’ll start with ELIZA, the original chatbot from the 1960s, observe a neural network, and look at an LLM-powered “What should I wear today?” app. You’ll even be able to download them for yourself!
This talk aims to be like the best parties — the ones you’re glad you were at. You’ll leave this one knowing more about AI’s underpinnings and a much better idea of the next steps in your AI journey, whether it’s catching up with AI developments, harnessing your current skills to integrate AI into your work, or even pivoting into AI development.
In my talk, I’ll discuss:
Generative vs discriminative AI
“Old School” rules-based AI vs. the “New School” version powered by neural networks, data science, and lots of data
How the internet changed AI
The intersection of data science, statistics, and AI
The paper “Attention is All You Need,” what it means, and how it changed AI forever
Large language models (LLMs)
Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)
Vector databases
This talk won’t be all hand-wavey and descriptions, but will also feature demos of actual working code that you can also download, including:
ELIZA, the original 1964 chatbot, but written in present-day Python.
A basic neural network demo that shows how you implement them — perhaps the one that recognizes handwritten numbers, perhaps something a little more interesting!
“Sweater or no?” — a large language model-powered application that tells you what to wear based on your location, the weather, and the event you’re attending.
I’ll also talk about potential “next steps” that you can take, including:
Reading material, including the funniest book about AI (for now): Janelle Shane’s You Look Like a Thing and I Love You. Of course, you don’t have to wait for the talk (or even attend) to read it; you can get it now!
There Will Be Math — or, the math you’ll need to know to get into AI.
Effective Altruists, Effective Accelerationists, and how to Effectively Avoid both.
How to send the right signals to employers so they’ll know that AI is your jam!
