Develop an Alexa Skill using Node and host it on AWS lambda

Here's the first of two Feb meetups! This one's a workshop so you're encouraged to bring a laptop (or you can pair with someone who has). I'm going to restrict numbers to 30 to keep it manageable.

Echo is Amazon’s is a hands-free speaker controlled by your voice. The speaker features Alexa Amazon’s very own personal assistant. Alexa will play your music, remind you to turn off the oven and anything you can dream of...... if you write and publish your own skill. Creating and publishing a skill is surprisingly easy and in tonight's workshop we will write new skills using node, upload it to AWS lambda and invoke it from a physical Echo. The evening will start by getting people up-to speed with a little bit of explanation of what we are going to do, before we pair up and write some new Skills for Alexa.

If you want to take part you'll need:

• an amazon account

• a laptop with Node 4.3.2 installed (or better still Node Version Manager nvm with node 4.3.2 installed)

This workshop will be hosted by John Albrecht who is a Scrum Master that loves empowering teams and has a penchant for Kanban.

£3 donations for Deepspaceworks greatly appretiated, there'll be tea and biscuits and free beer in the pub afterwards :-)