Chat Hack

[AverageMarcus]

Chat Hack is a hack day for people to make fun, quirky, useful and weird chat bots using web technologies.

What is a hack day?

A hack day is an event where people come together to collaborate on interesting ideas and learn new technologies. People usually organise themselves into teams, work on a project and then demo it at the end of the day. Hack days work best when there's a relaxed, open and friendly atmosphere.

Who is this event for?

Humans who want to chat either with each other or with computers.
If you can write code or draw pictures, that's a bonus!

What technologies are we using?

We will be focussing on web technologies: HTML and Javascript.

We'll have mentors who can help with libraries/platforms such as:

• Telegram
• Slack
• Twitter
• Facebook Messenger
• MS bot framework
• Custom chat room using websockets or similar.

We'll have beginner tutorials & example projects for these technologies, to get you started.

Feel free to try other tools and technologies, we will help wherever we can!

What does the day look like?

TBC

Time	Activity
09:30	Arrive, drink coffee and eat pastries
10:00	Intro to the tech
10:15	Discuss ideas and form teams
10:45	Start hacking
13:00	Lunch break!
17:00	Demos
17:30	Finish up and head to bar/cafe for post-event celebrations

When we get set up you'll have the chance to pair up with another attendee or embark on a workshop on your own. We'll have mentors on-hand to help if you get stuck or give you suggestions on workshops you might like.

Food

TBC

We'll be providing pastries from a local patisserie, and a burrito lunch. You'll get to build your own burrito/box. We'll also have a selection of fruits and snacks, teas and coffees.

If you have any concerns about dietary requirements (or any questions whatsoever) get in touch.

I have a question

Great! You can reach out to any of the JSOxford organisers:

Will fill this in closer to the date when we know who's about

• Marcus Noble
• Dan Pope

What will I need?

You'll need a laptop and charger. If you don't have access to a laptop let us know and we'll do our best to sort you out. If there are any chat platforms you want to try out it is recommended that you create an account prior to the event. If you don't know which platform you'd like to work in I'd recommend Telegram as they have some really nice chat bot features to play with.

Date

TBC

Saturday 1st April 2017, 09:30 to 17:00

Organisation

• Book venue (ensure wifi)
• Sort out projector
• Flesh out description for the day
• Invoice sponsors
• Add to Meetup.com
• Book pastries
• Purchase snacks/drinks
• Twitter hype

On the day

• Take photos
• Tweet all the things

---

Depending on what people want to get out of the day (e.g. what platform people are interested in) there is several different things we could do. If there is a keen interest in Twitter bots then we could maybe ask @edent if he's interested as he has a few interesting bots (https://twitter.com/fiverfun/, https://twitter.com/RGB_Colours, https://twitter.com/Edent_Solar)

I've messaged Martin Beeby to see about the possibility about him coming to talk about the MS bot framework.

Feel free to add additional idea in comments and I'll collect them in this post. 😄

[edent]

Happy to talk about my bots - although they are non-interactive. But can talk about listening to the streaming API and responding.

[AverageMarcus]

Who said chat has to be two ways? 😜

[lpmi-13]

+1 Pusher
+1 Call-based chat (visions of sugar-plumb fairies that can listen and respond somehow depending on what they hear dancing in my head...but perhaps this would be better at the language hack...)

[edent]

@lpmi-13 you could use Twilio for the voice recognition stuff. It can do basic IVR keyword detection.

[omgmog]

In Cardboctober I played with the speechRecognition API a bit, you should take a look at that and using it with a web-based UI.

Also some general Chat bot/UX resources/inspiration:

• https://medium.muz.li/the-ultimate-guide-to-chatbots-why-theyre-disrupting-ux-and-best-practices-for-building-345e2150b682
• https://hackernoon.com/open-design-standards-for-chat-ux-f9f786b3a68e
• https://medium.com/wizeline-engineering/6-tips-for-designing-your-best-chatbot-591aba9c9eff
• https://medium.com/@aditjain/how-to-build-a-kick-ass-ux-for-your-chat-bot-f01b46c551db

[lpmi-13]

hmmmm, depending on the relative dates for this and the language hack, might use this a ChatOps experiment to build on. What I'm actually more interested in is getting the raw audio data and then messing around with that instead of traditional voice recognition.

So things like responding not so much based on "words", but on relative pitch distances, tone contours, stress, etc.

I guess I'm more looking at audio processing than purely speech processing, so perhaps not super relevant for chatbot stuff.

[AverageMarcus]

@lpmi-13 if you haven't already speak to @danielthepope about how you can do something like that with nexmo

[benfoxall]

Yo, I’m super excited about this!

I guess the actual technologies/projects can be organised in the lead up to the event (or, even left to the attendees to come up with). Having too much defined/built in the lead up can constrain the projects, and also put more strain on the organisation.

Perhaps it would be useful to work out (and update the main ticket):

1. The name of the event (I’m a fan of Chat Hack, though it’s up to you)
2. A description/overview of the what people will get out of the day (like on the summer of hacks events).
3. Some idea of dates

@danielthepope @AverageMarcus I'm going to assign this issue/event to you (so, it's kind of up to you to own & help it happen) – you okay with that?

[benfoxall]

Date wise, jsoxfordy-stuff:

• December - soon (& usually super-busy)
• January - quiet / non-drink social
• February - evening meetup
• March - render (end), maybe a meetup
• April - evening meetup
• May - weekend event (perhaps)
• June - Language hack (perhaps)
• July - no plans

…perhaps mid March? Might be nice to have something on the lead up to Render?

[AverageMarcus]

Yeah that all sounds cool. I'll take a look at it when I'm back from the states 👍

[AverageMarcus]

I'm thinking 25th March (the weekend before Render).

Or could do April 1st (immediately following Render) as we could get some out-of-town attendees.

Thoughts?

---

Edit: I'm more liking the day following Render

[lpmi-13]

Would there be any interest in creating an SMS bot with some Twilio + webhooks? I'm thinking of making something that would be accessible for feature phones (read: dumb phones).

[AverageMarcus]

YES!

I have some twilio credit remaining that I never ended up using. I also have some Nexmo credit (similar services to Twilio) to use. Happy to share it around as long as you don't go crazy 😝

[lpmi-13]

oh, and what are the chances that anyone is interested in creating a chatbot for Line?

(apparently huge in Japan/Thailand/Indonesia)

[AverageMarcus]

https://developers.line.me/messaging-api/getting-started

[lpmi-13]

ah, nvmd...Line apparently only allows "business" account chatbots, and have some ridic registration requirments (not as bad as FB, but enough to put me off).

Kik, though, could happen...