Microsoft Ignite Australia 2017 - Conversations as a Platform

Have you ever wondered how a computer can learn to speak to a human? Siri and Cortana are recent examples of conversation bots, but the technology has been around for decades in different forms. Last week Dr Neil Roodyn from nsquared presented talks at Microsoft’s Australian tech conference, Ignite. His first two talks were about building bots that can hold a conversation with a customer, and potential ways in which this process could be used for business.

Click on the links below to watch the presentations.   

Conversation as a Platform Part 1 
Neil discusses the ways in which conversations have evolved in contemporary life through the use of various forms of technology. He explains how to code a conversational bot in Microsoft Visual Studio, using the example of ordering food online. Neil talks about how developers can create a good structure for the code, and explains the complex steps of chaining dialogs.

   

Conversation as a Platform Part 2 
In Part 2 Neil discusses ways in which we can create richer conversations between customers and applications. He discusses ways in which programs can make devices seem more intelligent, and how they can use data and ‘machine learning’ to gather information to make accurate predictions about customers. He talks in depth about LUIS – Language Understanding Intelligent Service, which allows apps to understand language. 

More Personal World

"The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed" 

- William Gibson

Everything we need to make computers more personal already exists and has existed for a long time. The main change is the price point. You no longer need to be as rich as Tony Stark in order to have this tech in your hands.

Futuristic tech is no longer limited to the richest few. Real life Tony Stark, Elon Musk. Source: amazonaws.com

Over the coming few years, Moore's law will continue to apply and technology will become more and more personal.

Today on the sunny Gold Coast of Australia, our very own Dr. Neil Roodyn is presenting at Ignite Australia on how to build more personal software for more personal computers. In his talk he will be showing developers how they can build software that has more context awareness and more natural interfaces using common hardware available today.

"Multi-touch technologies have a long history. To put it in perspective, the original work Undertaken by my team was done in 1984, the same year that the first Macintosh computer was released, and we were not the first." 

-Bill Buxton

 
Consider how a modern computer (yes, this includes your phone) can receive inputs; vision (camera), touch, gestures, ink (stylus), speech, identity (fingerprint scanner, face recognition, etc.) These inputs can be used by software to change the way people interact with computers, making the interaction more personal and more natural.

This leads to output from new computers that is more natural as well, computers that speak to us, present emotional content that is tailored to our needs and output that is tangible, touchable, interactive, and even present in our spaces. Technologies such as HoloLens are providing a glimpse into an exciting future on new modes of interactions.

More emotional content fed to us by our devices will mean a limitless number of exciting possibilities. nsquared's iBook, The Digital Table, presents our vision for how we see technology, and simultaneously, our relationships, changing.
 
Technology tailored to us, the future is looking good.

For more on how technology is changing the way we behave, follow nsquared on Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook.