HackHunterdon - "Alexa, how can I help my community?" (April 26, 2018)

Transcript

1. “Alexa, how can I help my community?” Sheil Naik
2. Hi, I’m Sheil! Global Data Technical Trainer at Bloomberg 2 github.com/sheilnaik twitter.com/sheilnaik
3. Tonight’s talk
4. How this talk got started... Technology Pancakes
5. Gronsky’s Milk House 5
6. Gronsky’s Milk House 6
7. Pancake of the Month 7 Gingerbread (Dec) Pumpkin (Oct) Red Velvet (Feb)
8. Place your screenshot here 8
10. How does Alexa work? More than just a series of tubes
11. 11 How does Alexa work? “Alexa, will it rain tomorrow?” Run corresponding AWS Lambda function to get weather Natural Language Processing Generate response phrase “There’s a 50 percent chance of rain in New York tomorrow.”
12. 12 What’s AWS Lambda? • Code that runs on-demand, without needing a server running • Alexa commands are serverless AWS Lambda functions • Most Lambda functions are written in Node.js or Python • I prefer Python
13. Building an Alexa Skill Utterances and intents and slots, oh my! Part One: Alexa Skills Kit
14. 14 Alexa Vocabulary • Utterance/Sample - The thing you say to Alexa • Intent - The thing that happens (the function that runs) when Alexa hears an utterance • Slot (optional) - Variables/parameters for your intent
15. 15 Alexa Vocabulary • Utterance/Sample - “Alexa, ask Skinnytaste for risotto recipes.” • Intent - SearchForRecipes • Slot - “risotto” Example
16. 16 Alexa Skills Kit Once you’ve created an AWS Developer account...
17. 17 Alexa Skills Kit
18. 18 Alexa Skills Kit What are you calling your skill? • “Alexa, ask [ ] for [ ].” • You may need to phonetically spell it out if Alexa has trouble with the pronunciation • “Gron skis” Invocation Name
19. 19 Alexa Skills Kit What’s your skill going to do? • Retrieve the pancake of the month • Let’s call our intent PancakeOfTheMonth Intents
20. 20 Alexa Skills Kit How will we trigger the intent? “Alexa, ask Gronsky’s…” • what is the pancake of the month • pancake of the month • this month’s pancake Samples (formerly known as Utterances)
21. 21 Alexa Skills Kit What variables/parameters do I want to send to my intent? • Gronsky’s skill currently has no slots • If I was storing every month’s pancake into a database, I could ask for a specific month’s pancake Slots
22. 22 Alexa Skills Kit Click Build Model to build the Alexa interaction model. Build Model
23. 23 Alexa Skills Kit This is where we connect our Alexa Interaction Model to our AWS Lambda function. Endpoint
24. Building an Alexa Skill “Where we’re going, we don’t need servers.” Part Two: AWS Lambda
25. 25 Lambda Visit the AWS Console and search for “Lambda”
26. 26 Lambda
27. 27 Lambda • Amazon provides a few sample Node.js Alexa templates • I use my own template for building Alexa skills in Python
28. 28 Lambda I hope you like dictionaries! • When you open an Alexa skill, it sends a bunch of data in an “input” dictionary called event • Your Lambda function is taking that “input” dictionary, doing a bunch of stuff, and then sending back a dictionary with the response
29. 29 Lambda My Lambda function template has five parts: 1. The main handler 2. Generic events 3. Determining the intent 4. Running the intent 5. Building a response
30. 30 Lambda • The first function that gets run when the Lambda function starts if event[‘request’][‘type’] == ‘LaunchRequest’: Run the on_launch() generic event if event[‘request’][‘type’] == ‘IntentRequest’: Run the on_intent() generic event Main Handler
31. 31 Lambda • Events that happen for every Alexa skill def on_launch(): Run the get_welcome_response() function that gives the user a “Hey, welcome to my Alexa skill” welcome message. Generic Events
32. 32 Lambda • Figure out which intent the skill is trying to run, and then run the code for that intent def on_intent(): if intent_name == ‘PancakeOfTheMonth’: return get_pancake_of_the_month() Determining the Intent
33. 33 Lambda • Do the actual thing the intent is supposed to do • Pass the result to build_response() to actually make the response that Alexa will say • For Gronsky’s, I scrape their website for the pancake of the month Running the Intent
34. 34 Lambda • Create a response to speak the result of the intent • You can also customize a nice visual “card” to show on the Echo Show or Alexa app • “The pancake of the month for April is carrot cake. To hear more information about Gronsky’s, say ‘Tell me about Gronsky’s’. Otherwise, say ‘Stop’ to quit.” Building the Response
35. 35 Lambda • Lambda uses a basic Python compiler • To add third-party libraries, include them in a .zip file along with your Lambda function and upload to Lambda • pip install requests -t /path/to/folder Adding additional libraries
36. Building an Alexa Skill A match made in heaven Part Three: Alexa Skills Kit Lambda
37. 37 ASK + Lambda Add Alexa Skills Kit as a Lambda trigger Copy your Lambda ARN into the Endpoint tab of Alexa Skills Kit
38. 38 My GitHub! github.com/sheilnaik
39. Connecting with our community Takeaways and how we can make a difference
40. 40 Call to Action • We as technologists have a series of unique and coveted skillsets • As we learn new technologies and experiment with new things, think about ways to apply them in our local communities How can you, as a technologist, make a difference in your community?
41. 41 Call to Action How can you, as a technologist, make a difference in your community? • You’ll have a chance to practice your skills while helping local business owners • It’ll make you feel great! • This is what HackHunterdon is all about!
42. 42 Call to Action How can you, as a local business owner, connect with technologists in your community? • Perform community outreach, engage with programs like HackHunterdon, and stay involved! • Your neighbors want to help you! • How can you incentivize them to do so?
43. Dawn Woods Gronsky’s Milk House
44. 44 Promo Postcards
45. 45 Thank you! • Dawn Woods from Gronsky’s Milk House • John Goodwin, Marc Saluk, and the other HackHunterdon organizers • All of you!
46. Thank you! Sheil Naik Global Data Technical Trainer @ Bloomberg github.com/sheilnaik twitter.com/sheilnaik