Bee Open Source project is gaining traction! We had the opportunity to present the entire stack at IBM TechXchange 2024, held from October 21-24 at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas.

What is IBM TechXchange?

IBM TechXchange 2024 is a premier technical learning event held at Mandalay Bay, Las Vegas, from October 21-24, 2024. Designed to immerse participants in hands-on experiences, professional certifications, and the latest tech trends, the event featured over 1,500 sessions and labs across key domains such as AI, automation, cloud, security, and sustainability.

• 7,000+ technical peers
• 1,500+ sessions and labs

My colleague Radek Ježek and I at the event.

Our Mission and how we tackled it

Our primary goal was to build visibility for the Bee project, collect feedback, and explore how the community could shape its future. The event spanned four days, with one session each day, followed by micro presentations in Sandbox where we had a ped.

In our workshop, we began with the fundamentals: defining what an LLM Agent is and how this approach contrasts with one-shot prompting, few-shot prompting, and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG). Next, we introduced the Bee Stack, followed by a deep dive into the Bee Agent Framework and Bee UI.

📝 The Agenda

1. What is an LLM agent? (brought by Maya Murad)

• From standalone LLMs to LLM agents
• What is an LLM Agent? (high-level)
• How to program an LLM agent?

2. Bee Stack overview (brought by Maya Murad)

• Overview with clarification of what each component does
• When should we pick the framework, and when should we use UI?

3. Bee Agent Framework - what is it and how to use it (kudos to @myself).

• What and how the framework helps you to build agentic applications
• Setting up the Bee Agent Framework Starter
• Running Bee agent with OpenMeteo and DuckDuckGo Tools
• Running Bee agent with Python code interpreter and a custom Python tool
• Observing agent's behavior via Bee Observe + MLFlow

4. Working with Bee Stack (UI) - building Bees (agents) directly in the UI (brought by Radek Ježek).

• Stack setup
• Playing with UI interface
• Creating an agent with image processing capabilities
• Building a data analytics agent

Feel free to check out the slides on your own

Live Demo of building Data Analytics Bee Agent

Want to try it yourself? Follow our step-by-step tutorial to build your first Bee agent!

Meet and greet in the Sandbox

People had the opportunity to meet and play with Bee directly in the Sandbox in our ped. We were also giving out Bee swag (stickers)!

Conclusion

Participating in IBM TechXchange 2024 was an incredible experience. It allowed us to exchange ideas with other open-source enthusiasts, showcase our work, and gain valuable insights into how the community perceives the stuff we build. Events like these offer a great opportunity not just to learn, but to connect with like-minded individuals and align your vision with the broader tech landscape.

What's next?

With the Bee project gaining momentum, we’re excited about the road ahead! We’ll soon publish in-depth documentation on each module within the stack, so contributors can get up to speed quickly.

Pssst... Bee swag is coming soon! Our contributors will be the first to receive it 🎉.

Resources Overview

• Bee Stack start high level, building with UI in your web browser.
• Bee Agent Framework start low-level, by writing code in TypeScript / JavaScript.
  • Starter repository
• Bee API
• Bee UI
• Bee Code Interpreter
• Bee Observe