--This presentation was presented in Serverless Summit - www.inserverless.com --- In this presentation I'll show you how to use Amazon Lambda and Lex to build a working chatbot in just a few minutes. No prior experience is required, you'll see how to use a simple starter kit built by myself and a friend to rapidly set up a bot. This is a great way to get your hands dirty with serverless programming on the AWS platform, and have some fun writing a bot!

1. Build a ChatBot in 10 Minutes!
Serverless Summit 2017, Bangalore
@dwmkerr
#inserverless
Dave Kerr
Senior Expert, McKinsey & Company

2. …or… chatbot jugaad!
@dwmkerr
#inserverless

3. Thank-you to the organisers and sponsors!

4. Who am I?
@dwmkerr
#inserverless

5. I am a technology consultant.
@dwmkerr
#inserverless

7. Which is closer to this…
@dwmkerr
#inserverless

9. What am I going to talk about?
@dwmkerr
#inserverless

10. Chatbots!
@dwmkerr
#inserverless
Perfect for serverless technology. Today is about fun, not ROI!

11. …I’ve got to come clean about
something…
@dwmkerr
#inserverless

12. …I know almost nothing about
chatbots!
@dwmkerr
#inserverless

13. Lawrence Hunt, Selin Lanzafame, Dave Kerr

14. Introducing Lex
@dwmkerr
#inserverless

15. “Amazon Lex is an AWS service for building conversational interfaces for any applications using
voice and text. With Amazon Lex, the same conversational engine that powers Amazon Alexa
is now available to any developer, enabling you to build sophisticated, natural language
chatbots into your new and existing applications. Amazon Lex provides the deep functionality
and flexibility of natural language understanding (NLU) and automatic speech recognition
(ASR) so you can build highly engaging user experiences with lifelike, conversational
interactions, and create new categories of products.”
@dwmkerr
#inserverless

16. Say what?
@dwmkerr
#inserverless

17. Let’s see it in action!
@dwmkerr
#inserverless

18. Demo 1: Get a boring-bot running
https://github.com/dwmkerr/lex-starter-kit
refs/heads/demo1
@dwmkerr
#inserverless

19. We setup the project with make setup
@dwmkerr
#inserverless

20. We can deploy lex models with make deploy

21. Here’s how our conversation looks so far
@dwmkerr
#inserverless

22. Getting Input
@dwmkerr
#inserverless

23. Most conversations need input!
@dwmkerr
#inserverless

24. Demo 2: Getting Input with Slots
https://github.com/dwmkerr/lex-starter-kit
refs/heads/demo2
@dwmkerr
#inserverless

25. We configure the environment with make config

26. We can deploy lex models with make deploy

27. Our conversation flow is now more complete

28. Cool kids use the shell for
everything
github.com/dwmkerr/effective-shell
@dwmkerr
#inserverless

29. Intermission: Using lex-chat
https://github.com/dwmkerr/lex-chat
@dwmkerr
#inserverless

30. Using sessions to manage
conversation state
@dwmkerr
#inserverless

31. Sometimes we have state which we
build up over a conversation…
@dwmkerr
#inserverless

32. Demo 3: Sessions
https://github.com/dwmkerr/lex-starter-kit
refs/heads/demo3
@dwmkerr
#inserverless

33. Use the session to persist conversation state between
intents

34. This gets complex! When do you
clear a session?
At least you save time on the
scripting 
@dwmkerr
#inserverless

35. Bootstrap your bots, and join in for
the next set of features!
github.com/dwmkerr/lex-starter-kit
github.com/dwmkerr/lex-chat
@dwmkerr
#inserverless

36. Thanks!
@dwmkerr
dwmkerr.com
github.com/dwmkerr
linkedin.com/in/dwmkerr

37. Appendices
@dwmkerr
#inserverless

38. Tips and Tricks
• Question marks in intent utterances will break Lex!
• Train with realistic data
• Complicated or very variable slots are very hard to work with (e.g.
sentences), consider using cards
• Encrypt sensitive environment variables such as keys when using lambda
functions
@dwmkerr
#inserverless