Smart phones were the first step in bringing the internet, data, and AI away from the desk and allowing us to be connected and sense some of the world around us wherever we go. The next step was wearables. These started as smart watches and fitness trackers, but this is slowly expanding into smart connected clothing and other devices.
In this series we learn how to build some smart wearables, leveraging the power of the cloud to make out clothes come to life! Learn how to add subtitles to your speech with a smart t-shirt, light up your hoodie when people say nice things about you, or have a parrot on your shoulder that reads to you.

Episode 4 – Reading parrot
Arrrgggghhh, me hearties! Every pirate needs a parrot but what if you could have one that could say more than just ‘Polly wants a cracker’, and ‘Pieces of eight’. What of your parrot could read to you?
In this episode of Wacky Wearables, Jim sticks a parrot on his shoulder (an inflatable one, not a real one), adds a camera, a Raspberry Pi Zero W 2, and teaches it how to read. Using a free AI service, this parrot can recognize both printed and hand-written text and read it out loud to you.

Who should attend:
This show is targeted towards developers looking to learn AI using fun demos

Useful Event Resource:
https://aka.ms/ComputerVisionService

Speaker:
Jim Bennett, Regional Cloud Advocate, Microsoft
Jim is a Regional Cloud Advocate focusing on building out and skilling communities in the Pacific North West, with a focus on the Microsoft Reactor in Redmond, Washington. He’s British, so sounds way smarter than he actually is, and is happy he moved to Redmond in time to be locked down at home and not see the office he came to work in, or the places he wanted to visit. In the past he’s lived in 4 continents working as a developer in the mobile, desktop, and scientific space. He's spoken at conferences and events all around the globe, organized meetup groups and communities, and written a book on mobile development.
He also hates and is allergic to cats, but has a 9-year-old daughter who loves cats, so he has 2 cats.