Tony Edwards
Tony is a full time Mobile developer, part time cat carer, occasional rapper, and reluctant Morris Dancer. When he's not talking at events, organising conferences, or tinkering with code, you'll find him tucked away in a sunny corner of the garden tending this years vegetables or preparing for next years.
With a background in community events management, a multi award winning career in the education sector, and a long history of making a fool of himself, Tony's sessions are sure to engage the audience, teach you something new, and spark conversation.
Lead Mobile Developer @ Sapphire Holidays
How to be a Hip-Hop MC. . . P
Session Type: Talk
Admit it. You've always wanted to become a hip-hop MC. Well. . . I have some good news. Shaping your organisations data into something consumable by an LLM is exactly the same thing. . . kind of. This talk will blur the lines between between forming a rap super group and crafting the perfect MCP.
The recipe for becoming a good hip-hop group is simple enough. A strong name. A solid flow. And flawless features. These will get you started.
The same is surprisingly true for MCPs.
In this talk, Tony Edwards will walk the audience through the refinement of an MCP (Model Context Protocol) server. Starting with something that is, quite frankly useless, and tuning it into the ultimate AI assistant plus the tooling that sits behind it. As a continuation of his Beats, Rhymes, and Neural Nets side project, the talk will look at creating a server that follows the protocol to make the most out of the standard through the lens of a hip-hop supergroup.
Whilst the session is light-hearted, the lessons within are practical and real.
After taking 25 years of data from around the Sapphire Holidays group and getting it into secure, locally hosted LLMs (Large Language Model), Tony has learned a thing or two. Standing them alongside Azure Foundry, Microsoft's hosted AI platform, offers a comparison between the high upfront cost of the DIY option against the ongoing cost of an off the shelf enterprise offering. Spoiler alert. They can both quickly turn into fun time sinks.
If you are thinking of incorporating LLMs into your business or side project, you'll walk away from this session with a grounded overview of two of the main options, next steps in opening up your data in a sensible way regardless of tech stack, and quite possibly a desire to form a rap ensemble.
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