Who's That Armadillo?
April 10, 2024
My bot avatar was originally going to be called Artie the Aardvark, but in a late-night messaging mix-up, Mom's drawing came out as an armadillo. And with a drawing like this, and with "Rock the Casbah" on repeat, Armadillo it is.
You'll agree that it's not an Artie.
My father, who took great pride in his skill at inventing mellifluous and rhythmic names, suggested to a certain Mr. Pepe of his acquaintance that he give his newborn baby boy the name of Armando.
"Armando Pepe," my father would say. "I had the perfect name for that baby. With two short syllables in Pepe, you need something with three syllables. Like Armando. Armando Pepe."
"What did they end up naming him?"
"John."
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Speaking of names, let's talk about the name of this newsletter: Model Citizen Developer. I'd like to establish exactly what it is that I'm trying to do here. The vision thing, the mission statement, the raison d'etre. And then we can get back to the armadillo.
Model: Show your work.
Citizen: Go hyperlocal.
Developer: Build quickly, low-code or no-code.
Model + Citizen: Do the right thing.
Citizen + Developer: Do what you can; leave the rest to the pros.
Put it all together, and you get this:
I'm writing about what I'm building for my neighbors.
Since I live near Seattle Convention Center and Downtown Seattle, my neighbors include a steady flow of visitors and convention-goers.
With the new Seattle Convention Center Summit, what was once a neighborhood between neighborhoods (think long-stay hotels and bus terminals) is slowly transforming into a premium destination for regional, domestic, and international visitors. And, one hopes, a wonderful place to live.
We still have a way to go. We have a glaring social services deficit, a waterfront to finish, and a highway that needs a lid. I believe we'll get there. We'll have light rail to Lynnwood this August, and a connection to Bellevue and Redmond in 2025. Then, over five weeks in the summer of 2026, Seattle will be one of the hosts of the FIFA World Cup, welcoming an estimated 750,000 visitors (about equal to the population of Seattle). Following that, it's not going to slow down.
With its new profile, the neighborhood needs its own name. Convention City has a nice ring to it.
And the neighborhood needs its own voice. I'm envisioning a periodical that reads like a mash-up of Puget Sound Business Journal, The Urbanist, and Capitol Hill Blog. That's the idea for Convention City Seattle.
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Meanwhile, I'm continuing the transition (per my LinkedIn headline): "From programmer to writer and back again."
As transitions go, it's more of a gradient than an all-out career switch. I'm still working as a writer, except now I'm delving deeper into writing aimed at a technical audience. It's a nice change of pace and a welcome challenge.
In much of my earlier professional work, whether as an editor at Bank Systems & Technology or an independent contractor writing on behalf of consultancies, I would write about high-level trends: channel strategy, risk management, banking and insurance regulations, financial industry standards, and any number of business topics aimed predominately at senior executives in global financial services.
If I were to train a generative AI model on that corpus, it would refinance my mortgage to invest in the blockchain.
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Speaking of generative AI, I just did an experiment with Copilot Studio. Using an off-the-shelf bot with almost no customization, I turned on the Conversational Boosting feature. This gives the bot instant access to generative answers based on content from your curated selection of websites, SharePoint/OneDrive files, and uploaded files. It's ChatGPT pointing at a small list of your own sources.
I made a bot that pointed to the Visitors pages on the Seattle Convention Center website (Parking, Visitor Resources, Food & Drink, and Public Art), plus with the contents of the Summit art catalog.
Immediately, the bot gave answers to questions about where to park and where to eat.
Plus, it answers questions about the art, such as:
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What sculptures (or oil paintings, acrylic paintings) do you have?
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Which artworks have birds (or tigers or clouds)?
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Which painting are small-scale (or large-scale) in size?
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Which artwork uses the most unusual materials?
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Tell me more about the work by <artist's name>.
These are good results for very little effort. But it's lacking in its recommendations, leaving plenty of room for human intelligence to create meaningful pathways through the collection.
As part of that effort, I'm learning how to use Dynamic Chaining, a relatively new Copilot feature (in preview) that connects your bot with data sources from Azure and external systems. By creating a repository of "AI plugins," you can point Copilot directly into both structured and unstructured data. Without having to code custom APIs or write fancy SQL queries, you'll get real information back.
That's what I'm working on with my Convention City tourism app.
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Meet Armando Pepe Armadillo, who just moved here from Texas, y'all!
As an art docent, Armando will be pleased to tell you about the artwork at the Summit. But if you ask a particularly challenging question, don't be surprised if Armando curls up into a little ball. (Link active through April 18, 2024.)
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At the Convention Center Arch earlier today, I demonstrated the bot to a former colleague.
"I didn't know you were such a techie," she said.
"I don't just look like a nerd," I replied. "I am one."