Building a serverless "positive chat" and why products and teams are important

ServerlessDays, Sydney, August 27th, 2019

I wanted to build something to improve the way we communicate, a 'positive chat' that rejects sentences with negative sentiment and translates messages to be more inclusive. As I was building, I thought: What are the issues for serverless developments? What about teams? This session is the result.

Transcript

1. © 2019, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates.
   Danilo Poccia
   Principal Evangelist, Serverless
   @danilop
   danilop
   Building a serverless “positive chat” and
   why products and teams are important
   

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2. © 2019, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates.
   HTTP protocol
   Client Server
   Request
   Response
   

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3. © 2019, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates.
   WebSockets protocol
   GET /chat HTTP/1.1
   Host: server.example.com
   Upgrade: websocket
   Connection: Upgrade
   Sec-WebSocket-Key: x3JJHMbDL1EzLkh9GBhXDw==
   Sec-WebSocket-Protocol: chat, superchat
   Sec-WebSocket-Version: 13
   Origin: http://example.com
   HTTP/1.1 101 Switching Protocols
   Upgrade: websocket
   Connection: Upgrade
   Sec-WebSocket-Accept: HSmrc0sMlYUkAGmm5OPpG2HaGWk=
   Sec-WebSocket-Protocol: chat
   Client Server
   Request
   Response
   WebSocket
   

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4. © 2019, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates.
   Serverless Real-Time Apps – There are a few options
   • AWS IoT Core without physical devices
   • MQTT pub/sub
   • AWS AppSync
   • GraphQL subscriptions
   • Amazon API Gateway
   • WebSocket connections
   New
   

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5. © 2019, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates.
   Amazon API Gateway – WebSocket APIs
   Amazon API
   Gateway
   Connect
   function
   Web
   browser
   AWS Cloud
   Region
   WebSocket
   connection
   (stateful)
   Disconnect
   Connect
   By Route Key(s)
   Default
   Disconnect
   function
   Route Key
   function(s)
   Default
   function
   API Gateway
   integration
   (stateless)
   SigV4 POST
   @ConnectionId
   ConnectionId ConnectionId
   

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6. © 2019, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates.
   Serverless Real-Time Apps – What to build?
   • Building a chat is the mandatory example for WebSockets
   • Can I build something that can help in being a “better” person?
   • Not in person communication is hard
   • Can machine learning help? Some services are super easy to use!
   

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7. © 2019, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates.
   FRAMEWORKS AND INTERFACES
   ML for data scientists
   KERAS
   Frameworks Interfaces
   APPLICATION SERVICES
   ML for everyone
   PLATFORM SERVICES
   ML for engineers
   NVIDIA
   Tesla V100 GPUs
   (14x faster than P2)
   Machine Learning
   AMIs
   INFRASTRUCTURE
   Powering the ML
   Intel Xeon
   Skylake
   (Optimized for ML)
   A W S
   G R E E N G R A S S M L
   L E X P O L L Y R E K O G N I T I O N
   I M A G E & V I D E O
   T R A N S C R I B E T R A N S L A T E C O M P R E H E N D F O R E C A S T P E R S O N A L I Z E
   A M A Z O N
   S A G E M A K E R
   A W S
   D E E P L E N S
   S A G E M A K E R
   G R O U N D T R U T H &
   M E C H A N IC A L T U R K
   S P A R K
   & E M R
   

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8. © 2019, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates.
   Let’s build a “Positive Chat” J
   • Avoid negative sentiment
   • Reject negative sentences
   • Positive sentiment gamification
   • Automatically translate between different languages
   • Extract message topics to improve searchability and discoverability
   • Create and update a chat room “tag cloud”
   • Search or filter messages by “tag”
   

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9. © 2019, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates.
   Let’s build a “Positive Chat” J
   • Attach images to messages
   • Moderate content
   • Describe image content (objects, people, emotions)
   • Find text in images
   • Anonymize people faces
   • For all people or based on estimated age
   • Cover faces with emoticon based on actual emotions
   

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10. © 2019, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates.
    Positive Chat – Serverless architecture
    Amazon
    DynamoDB
    Amazon
    Cognito
    Amazon API
    Gateway
    WebSocket
    connection
    PositiveChat
    Lambda function
    Connections
    table
    Conversations
    table
    Topics
    table
    Web
    browser
    AWS Cloud
    S3 bucket for
    static assets
    (HTML, CSS, JS)
    Authentication
    Authorization
    To be implemented
    Amazon
    Comprehend
    Amazon
    Translate
    Amazon
    Rekognition
    To be implemented
    

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11. © 2019, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates.
    AWS Serverless Application Model (SAM)
    AWSTemplateFormatVersion: '2010-09-09’
    Transform: AWS::Serverless-2016-10-31
    Resources:
    GetFunction:
    Type: AWS::Serverless::Function
    Properties:
    Handler: index.get
    Runtime: nodejs8.10
    CodeUri: src/
    Policies:
    - DynamoDBReadPolicy:
    TableName: !Ref MyTable
    Events:
    GetResource:
    Type: Api
    Properties:
    Path: /resource/{resourceId}
    Method: get
    MyTable:
    Type: AWS::Serverless::SimpleTable
    Just 20 lines to create:
    • Lambda function
    • IAM role
    • API Gateway
    • DynamoDB table
    O
    pen
    Source
    

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12. © 2019, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates.
    Use SAM CLI to package and deploy SAM templates
    pip install --user aws-sam-cli # Or use Linux/Windows/macOS installers
    sam init --name my-app --runtime python
    cd my-app/
    sam local ... # generate-event/invoke/start-api/start-lambda
    sam validate # The SAM template
    sam build # Depending on the runtime
    sam package --s3-bucket my-packages \
    --output-template-file packaged.yaml
    sam deploy --template-file packaged.yaml \
    --stack-name my-stack-prod
    sam logs -n MyFunction --stack-name my-stack-prod -t # Tail logs
    sam publish # To the Serverless Application Repository
    O
    pen
    Source
    CodePipeline
    Use
    CloudFormation
    deployment
    actions with any
    SAM application
    Jenkins
    Use SAM CLI
    plugin
    

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13. © 2019, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates.
    Demo
    

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14. © 2019, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates.
    Positive Chat Demo
    • https://pcs.demo.danilop.net/?room=Sydney
    

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15. © 2019, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates.
    Positive Chat Demo
    • https://github.com/danilop/serverless-positive-chat
    

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16. © 2019, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates.
    $ wc -l positive-chat/app.js
    326 positive-chat/app.js
    $ wc -l www/index.js
    204 www/index.js
    backend + frontend ≃ 460 lines of code
    removing empty lines and comments
    

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17. © 2019, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates.
    © 2019, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates.
    What about teams?
    Photo by Perry Grone on Unsplash
    

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18. © 2019, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates.
    You Build It, You Run It
    “This brings developers into
    contact with the day-to-day
    operation of their software. It
    also brings them into day-to-
    day contact with the
    customer.”
    – Werner Vogels
    CTO, Amazon.com
    

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19. © 2019, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates.
    Team size & communication paths
    =
    ( − 1)
    2
    Communication paths
    in a team of N people
    

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20. © 2019, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates.
    Two pizza teams
    Photo by Kristina Bratko on Unsplash
    

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21. © 2019, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates.
    Separable vs complex tasks
    Separable
    task
    Complex
    task
    

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22. © 2019, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates.
    Ability as a collection of cognitive tools
    Adam
    Abilities = 5
    { A, B, C, D, E }
    For example:
    A – mobile development on iOS
    B – back end development in Java
    C – data analytics in Python
    D – complex SQL queries
    E – …
    

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23. © 2019, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates.
    Ability as a collection of cognitive tools
    Adam Carl
    Betsy
    { C, D, G }
    Abilities = 5 Abilities = 4 Abilities = 3
    { A, B, E, F }
    { A, B, C, D, E }
    

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24. © 2019, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates.
    Diversity bonus model – Team with best abilities
    Adam Carl
    Betsy
    { C, D, G }
    Abilities = 5 Abilities = 4 Abilities = 3
    Team Abilities = 6
    { A, B, E, F }
    { A, B, C, D, E }
    

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25. © 2019, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates.
    Diversity bonus model – Team with more cognitive tools
    Adam Carl
    Betsy
    { A, B, E, F }
    { A, B, C, D, E } { C, D, G }
    Abilities = 5 Abilities = 4 Abilities = 3
    Team Abilities = 7
    

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26. © 2019, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates.
    No diversity, no bonus – Beware hiring managers
    Adam Carl
    Betsy
    { A, B, C, D }
    { A, B, C, D, E } { B, C, D }
    Abilities = 5 Abilities = 4 Abilities = 3
    

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27. © 2019, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates.
    Some cognitive tools must be learned in order
    Adam Carl
    Betsy
    { A, B, C, D }
    { A, B, C, D, E } { A, B, C }
    Abilities = 5 Abilities = 4 Abilities = 3
    

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28. © 2019, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates.
    2,092 people who worked on
    474 musicals from 1945 to 1989
    Small world networks & creativity
    AJS Volume 111 Number 2 (September 2005): 000–000 PROOF 1
    ᭧ 2005 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.
    0002-9602/2005/11102-0003$10.00
    Thursday Oct 13 2005 11:31 AM AJS v111n2 090090 VSJ
    Collaboration and Creativity: The Small
    World Problem1
    Brian Uzzi
    Northwestern University
    Jarrett Spiro
    Stanford University
    Small world networks have received disproportionate notice in di-
    verse fields because of their suspected effect on system dynamics.
    The authors analyzed the small world network of the creative artists
    who made Broadway musicals from 1945 to 1989. Based on original
    arguments, new statistical methods, and tests of construct validity,
    they found that the varying “small world” properties of the systemic-
    level network of these artists affected their creativity in terms of the
    financial and artistic performance of the musicals they produced.
    The small world network effect was parabolic; performance in-
    creased up to a threshold after which point the positive effects
    reversed.
    Creativity aids problem solving, innovation, and aesthetics, yet our un-
    derstanding of it is still forming. We know that creativity is spurred when
    diverse ideas are united or when creative material in one domain inspires
    or forces fresh thinking in another. These structural preconditions suggest
    1 Our thanks go out to Duncan Watts; Huggy Rao; Peter Murmann; Ron Burt; Matt
    Bothner; Frank Dobbin; Bruce Kogut; Lee Fleming; David Stark; John Padgett; Dan
    Diermeier; Stuart Oken; Jerry Davis; Woody Powell; workshop participants at the
    University of Chicago, University of California at Los Angeles, Harvard, Cornell, New
    York University, the Northwestern University Institute for Complex Organizations
    (NICO); and the excellent AJS reviewers, especially the reviewer who provided a
    remarkable 15, single-spaced pages of superb commentary. We particularly wish to
    thank Mark Newman for his advice and help in developing and interpreting the
    bipartite-affiliation network statistics. We also wish to give very special thanks to the
    Santa Fe Institute for creating a rich collaborative environment wherein these ideas
    first emerged, and to John Padgett, the organizer of the States and Markets group at
    the Santa Fe Institute. Direct correspondence to Brian Uzzi, Kellog School of Man-
    agement, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois 60208. E-mail:
    Uzzi@northwestern.edu
    

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29. © 2019, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates.
    1. Write less code, be serverless
    2. Give teams ownership and autonomy
    3. Minimize communication paths
    4. Maximize different abilities
    5. Mix new and existing relationships
    

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30. © 2019, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates.
    © 2019, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates.
    Thank you!
    @danilop
    danilop
    

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