AI @ CastleCamp 2023

by Markus Egger | First published: October 1, 2023 - Last Updated: November 27, 2023

CODE was recently involved in a very unusual event: CastleCamp 2023 in Austria (Kaprun) - www.castlecamp.at

CastleCamp is an “unconference” or “bar camp”. It's not even an IT event (which would be what we would normally attend and support), but it is an event for tourism professionals and decision makers. Since it is an “unconference”, no sessions are published ahead of time. Instead, the event starts with a general introduction of everyone and what they are an expert in, and then all the attendees vote on the topics they would either like to learn about or could do a presentation about. People therefore to not “part-take” in the event, but they “part-give”. Everyone is involved. Sessions aren't the usual monologs, but instead are an exchange and a dialog. It's a format I very much enjoy.

As the name of the event implies, it took place at an honest-to-god castle in the Austrian Alps. The setting (“Burg Kaprun”) is out of this world, but the pairing of a castle with the high-tech world of AI made this a truly unique setting.

I attended this event, because people in the tourism industry use a lot of technology. I was therefore the “token software guy”. In the past, I have “part-given” in this event and provided my expertise about Cloud technologies (especially Azure), but this time around it was all about - wait for it - Artificial Intelligence!

At first, I really wasn't sure how much interest in AI there would be. But boy, was I in for a surprise! In fact, it became clear very quickly as people voted for specific types of content, that absolutely every single time slot was filled with an AI topic! The organizers even had to opt for limiting AI content so there would also be some “normal” tourism topics.

So, what do tourism peole do with AI? Well, just about anything imaginable. They use technologies like ChatGPT and DALL-E to generate content. They integrate LLMs into their web sites to answer guest's questions in hotels. There even was someone who worked on an “AI Concierge” product for hotels. I could easily see those types of concepts extended. I can see hotel back-office software use AI for a range of things, from dealing with guests to optmizing food-waste in catering scenarios (all these things were discussed at the event). There are knowledgebases for entire regions that are currently kept in an incredible number of different languages. I can see AI being capable of using a single-language knowledegebase to answer questions in all kinds of languages, similar to what we are already doing in this screenshot (which happens to be a Windows app, but it really doesn't matter), where an English-language knowledgebase is used to answer a question in German (and it could be any other language as well):

I was able to provide some expertise and behind-the-scenes information. I essentially did a short version of our Executive Briefings. (This is also available to you. Find out more information here: https://www.codemag.com/ExecutiveBriefing). While tourism is clearly taking to AI, most of it is at the beginning stages, using offerings that are currently popular, like ChatGPT. Showing off some of our projects that integrate AI directly into business applications and web sites provided some additional insight that I hope resonated with people. (And judging by the amount of follow-up questions I have received since the event, I think the answer to that is a resounding “yes”).

It has been a lot of fun to see how various industries take to AI. I am a firm believer that there is no industry that could not benefit from AI in some way, and this event has re-affirmed that belief.

Some photos from this event:

The mesmerizing setting of Burg Kaprun Castle:

Markus presenting on the topic of AI:

The weather was fantastic, so some sessions could be held outside:

Lunch in the castle's main dining hall, where knights feasted hundreds of years ago: