Sarah Withee!
Polyglot software engineer
Bio!
Sarah Withee is a polyglot software engineer, international public speaker, teacher and mentor, and hardware and robot tinkerer located in Pittsburgh, PA. She has a passion for technology, and has ever since she wrote her first computer programs in elementary school. She captivates audiences with both popular and powerful technical and anecdotal talks. She gives workshops to teach programming and hardware building to women in tech, as well as to students of all ages. She's mentored middle and high school robotics teams to world championships. She's even helped organize six conferences, been on a Google Year in Search video, and started the viral hashtag #SpeakerConfessions.
She passionately tries to connect with people and communities, both online and offline, and encourage and support new people going in tech. She even started a podcast to try to help boost underrepresented groups in tech.
Session!
"Hey Mycroft": Getting Started with the OSS Home Assistant
Home virtual assistants, like Alexa, Google Now, Siri, and Cortana, are gaining a lot of popularity. They’re now incorporated into our phones, our laptops, and even available as separate devices in our homes. Some people haven’t adopted them out of privacy concerns. A new system called Mycroft has come onto the scene, and it’s built on open source hardware and software. You can install it on a Raspberry Pi, an old Linux box, or buy their own Mycroft device.
In this session, we’ll go over the basics of what Mycroft is, and how you can quickly build your own "Picroft" on a Raspberry Pi. From there, we’ll talk about how it works under the hood and see a short demo. Finally, we’ll see how to build new skills into it and contribute them back to the community. You’ll leave with your own virtual assistant and the knowledge on how make it do what you want but keep your privacy in check.
Where/When?