Amazon Alexa 101 Hackathon - Win an Amazon Tap!

Hackster & Amazon Present: Alexa Skill Building 101

Tickets are required for entry, be sure to RSVP by getting your ticket here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/hackster-amazon-present-alexa-skill-building-101-tickets-26046925054

About the Event:

On Saturday, July 30 at Noon, we bring you the Hackster.io + Amazon Alexa workshop! Alexa is the speech and personal assistant technology behind Amazon Echo. Today you can use Alexa to listen to music, play games, check traffic and weather, control your household devices such as Philips Hue and Belkin WeMo, and lots more. Alexa offers a full-featured set of APIs and SDKs that you can use to teach her new skills and add her into devices and applications of your own.

Memo Doring, Alexa Developer Evangelist at Amazon, will be hosting Alexa Skill Building 101. In this talk, we will walk through the development of a new Alexa skill and incorporate it into a consumer-facing device such as an Echo or Tap.

There will be snacks available, and an afternoon of hacking will follow the talk. Finish off the day with dinner and incredible prizes sponsored by Amazon. Those attendees who are able to follow along with the workshops will walk out equipped to make new skills of their own for Alexa. Submit 3 published skills within 1 month of our event, and Amazon will ship you an Amazon Tap device (portable version of the Echo) free!

Prerequisites and What to Bring: Please bring or sign up for the following locations prior to the event so you can be fully prepared and ready to rock!

• Bring a laptop. Free wifi will be available at the event.

• Create an Amazon Developer Account: https://developer.amazon.com/

• Create a Free Amazon AWS Account: https://aws.amazon.com/

• If you don’t have one already, create an account at http://www.hackster.io

• Read over this document and the FAQ’s below to be fully prepped!

Additional Resources:

Getting Started with the Alexa Skills Kit:https://developer.amazon.com/ask

Amazon AWS Lambda: https://aws.amazon.com/lambda/ (Select US EAST N. Virginia for free tier)

Alexa Developer Portal: https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/alexa

Alexa Skills Kit Javascript Samples: https://github.com/amzn/alexa-skills-kit-js

Build a DIY Echo w/ a Raspi 2!
https://github.com/amzn/alexa-avs-raspberry-pi

http://photos1.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/7/3/4/2/600_451709506.jpeg

FAQ:

Do I need a ticket? Yes. Tickets are required to ensure we have an accurate head count, enough food for everyone, and is required for earning your very own Amazon Tap.

What do I need to bring?

A laptop and a thirst for knowledge is all that’s required, but please also visit the Prerequisites section above so you won’t have to waste time during the event setting up accounts.

This is at Noon - Should I eat lunch first? We will have some snacks available, but yes we suggest eating lunch prior. However, dinner’s on us!

Do I need to know how to program or code? Developing with the Alexa Skills Kit is beginner-friendly, but some experience with development, especially Javascript will be helpful.

Do I need to have Alexa-enabled hardware? Nope! You can test your skills with nothing but a web browser and a microphone viahttp://echosim.io (http://echosim.io/)

What do I need to get started? The links above will give you a good head start on what will be covered during the presentation.