Alexa, make a new skill with Python.

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Amazon Alexa is appearing in everything from Amazon's original Echo to the latest multi-thousand dollar refrigerators (http://www.theverge.com/ces/2017/1/4/14166240/lg-webos-amazon-alexa-fridge-announce-ces-2017) showcased at CES this past week.

We'll do a live walk-through using:

• Amazon Lambda (https://aws.amazon.com/lambda/): for deploying server-less application logic written in Python

• Amazon Alexa Skills Kit (https://developer.amazon.com/alexa-skills-kit): for controlling Alexa enabled devices, including some of the capabilities around defining intents, utterances, custom slots, and general design considerations as you play in the ASK framework.

This session will help lay the foundation for not only making your own skills that you can publish to the Amazon Skills "store", but also help you leverage Alexa Voice Service (https://developer.amazon.com/alexa-voice-service) to build terrifying works like Tedlexa, the Internet of Things/AI bear of your nightmares (http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/01/you-cant-unsee-tedlexa-the-internet-of-thingsai-bear-of-your-nightmares).

Even if you don't own an Alexa-enabled device, you can still join in and use Amazon's live testing service for hearing the voice response you'd get from real hardware!

So, if you want to be hands on with us, please bring:

• laptop (anything with a modern browser and wifi is really all you need)

• your Amazon account (you can pre-register at https://developer.amazon.com using your existing Amazon user account)

• ideally, a local Python 2.7 environment (Lambda only supports 2.7...wicked lame, I know!)