Bailey Simrell - Technologist and the founder of Just Right Place

In this session, Bailey Simrell shares the journey of building ScrantonAI — a chatbot-style assistant that makes it easier to access public records and government information. Originally developed to solve a personal problem, ScrantonAI has evolved into a civic platform used by residents and public employees alike. Bailey will walk through the product’s development, how it works under the hood, and how large language models can be tailored for highly local, domain-specific use cases like his where he accidentally discovered missing government documents. The talk also explores upcoming features, enhancements, and add-ons — and what this kind of tooling could mean for the future of AI in local government.