I've open sourced a sample that shows how to build Alexa skills via the serverless framework OpenWhisk and IBM Watson Conversation. The sample demonstrates how to define a conversation flow declaratively via Watson Conversation dialogs and it shows how to pass context between different intents. (more…)

Today, IBM announced a new collaborative development initiative with Lightbend, a provider of a reactive application development platform for building distributed apps. When trying to learn more about that platform, I found a great presentation from the Lightbend CTO Jonas Bonér where he describes the concepts behind reactive microservices. (more…)

I've open sourced a simple sample that shows how to leverage IBM Watson Conversation in Slack bots via the open source project Botkit. With Botkit and a Watson middleware text messages defined in Conversation dialogs can easily be used in Slack bots. My sample shows additionally how to use Slack buttons in messages and how to invoke business logic at certain stages of the conversation. (more…)

In my previous role I worked on improvements for tooling for conversational user experiences. One of these improvements was an easy way to gather user input before actions are invoked. These typical conversation scenarios are often referred to as 'slot filling'. (more…)

Earlier this year IBM introduced a new service DevOps Insights (beta) which helps among other things to reduce deployment risks. Policies can be defined to ensure that unit tests, functional tests and other tests pass before new versions of applications are deployed. (more…)

As part of the IBM Bluemix Continues Delivery functionality toolchains allow the integration of third party and open source tools. One example is the usage of the automation server Jenkins to build and deploy applications rather than using the delivery pipelines provided by IBM. (more…)

Earlier this year IBM introduced a new service DevOps Insights (beta) which helps among other things to reduce deployment risks. Policies can be defined to ensure that unit tests, functional tests and other tests pass before new versions of applications are deployed. (more…)

Last week IBM introduced a new feature in IBM Bluemix. Developers can now easily add API management functionality to their Cloud Foundry apps hosted on Bluemix. (more…)

As part of the Bluemix Continues Delivery functionality toolchains allow the integration of third party and open source tools. Below are two samples how to leverage PagerDuty and Slack to get notifications about state changes in pipelines. (more…)

Last week I attended Pioneers in Vienna, Austria, to present IBM Watson and the IBM Cloud and to talk with developers. Below are some pictures. (more…)