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Alexa Blogs
Today, we are happy to announce Alexa Dev Days, a new event series from Amazon and sponsored by Intel. We invite learners of all levels to join us in more than 25 cities worldwide for training sessions, workshops, live demos, and networking with Alexa experts and your peers. Engage in hands-on sessions where you will learn to create voice experiences and hear the latest on UI design and industry trends. Content and technical complexity will vary by city. More cities will be added in the coming months. See all events and sign up.
Natural User Interfaces: The Next Major Disruption in Computing
Today we are experiencing a revolution in user interface design. It’s Day 1 in a new era of ambient computing, where we can communicate naturally with our homes, cars and other devices. Early adopters capitalized on past UI innovations such as point-and-click, web browsing, and touchscreen devices and we hear from developers, designers, brands and students that you are excited about the potential of this new form of interaction, and looking for more opportunities to learn.
“At Amazon, we believe that natural user interfaces, like those based on speech, represent the next major disruption in computing,” said Steve Rabuchin, Vice President of Alexa. “We are excited to introduce Alexa Dev Days in collaboration with Intel. These events will give you hands-on learning opportunities from Amazon trainers and experts. You’ll hear from some of our leaders, and will come away with a prototype Alexa skill or device. We can’t wait to see what you create.”
Alexa and Intel
Amazon Alexa and Intel share a passion for helping developers, makers and companies deliver innovative experiences on behalf of customers and have collaborated to extend natural voice interaction for consumers. Last year at AWS re:Invent, Intel introduced the Intel-based Smart Home Hub, and announced a new far-field reference design to help developers build smart home solutions. In May, Intel furthered its investment in smart home innovation by integrating Intel’s Atom x5-Z8350 processors to power two new Alexa devices from Amazon: Echo Show and Echo Look.
“Bringing together the leading smart home innovations across Intel and Amazon is key to pushing the industry forward and we’re excited to see what the developer community will come up with during this workshop series,” said Miles Kingston, General Manager of the Smart Home Group at Intel Corporation. “We look forward to meeting with key creators and makers as Intel continues to introduce new ways for developers to innovate and build in the conversational AI that make Alexa smarter and more powerful every day.”
About Alexa Dev Days
Each Alexa Dev Day offers a hands-on, immersive learning opportunity with topics ranging from smart home to gaming. After a short introduction, an Amazon trainer will guide you through the mechanics of building voice experiences using Amazon Alexa. You’ll start by learning how to build an Alexa skill using our skill building design tool and AWS Lambda. Then, we will focus on the design process, including time for brainstorming and sharing ideas with your peers.
The agenda will also include blocks of time for completing lab exercises while mentored by an onsite Amazon Alexa expert. You can choose from a catalog of lab exercises that show how to build skills to tell facts, recommend a restaurant, play a game, call an API, read and write from a database, and call to other AWS resources. Select events will also include workshops that teach you how to create an Alexa-enabled device using the Alexa Voice Service. Visit our landing page to see event topics and learn more.
What You’ll Learn:
- Walk away with a better understanding voice UI concepts and Alexa development
- Learn all the steps to customize and submit Alexa skills for certification. Once certified, new skills will be published in the Alexa app as a referenceable project for your portfolio.
- Gain experience with new services, including: Alexa Voice Service, Alexa Skills Kit, AWS Lambda (part of Amazon Web Services), and the Node.js back-end Javascript framework.
Choose the Right Type of Sessions: Introductory or Advanced
Content and technical complexity will vary by city. At introductory sessions, you will need basic familiarity with coding concepts, or can complete our prerequisite (submitting a skill using one of our tutorials or building a prototype Alexa device using our walkthrough). Content at advanced sessions is appropriate for developers with some experience building for voice. If you don’t have experience but want to attend an advanced session, you should complete the introductory prerequisite and check out our Amazon Alexa Voice Design Guide which includes voice design concepts and practical guidelines to help get you up to speed. See all cities.
Get Started
We can’t wait to see you! Sign up for an event today and follow us at @AlexaDevs to hear about more upcoming events. If you want to get started now, check out these additional Alexa developer resources:
Build a Skill, Get an Echo Dot and New Alexa Swag
Developers have built more than 15,000 skills with the Alexa Skills Kit. Explore the stories behind some of these innovations, then start building your own skill. If you’re serious about getting into building voice UIs, we’d like to help you explore. If you publish a skill in July and apply for our promotion, we’ll send you an Echo Dot and some new Alexa swag so you can experiment and daydream.
