After more than three months of hard work from Alexa developers around the world, the Alexa Skill Challenge: Tech for Good has concluded. Last week, we held our final judging event to determine the grand prize winner of this challenge from the 10 finalists selected.

In July, we announced the Alexa Skills Challenge: Tech for Good. The challenge invited developers to build Alexa skills that could have a positive impact on the environment, local communities, and the world. We’ve finally narrowed down the 10 finalists and we’re excited to share them with you.

There are 25 days left to the enter the Alexa Skills Challenge: Tech for Good. Follow these tips to build the best possible Alexa skills for good and enter the challenge.

We’re thrilled to announce the Alexa Skills Challenge: Tech for Good with Devpost, an opportunity for you to create an Alexa skill that has a positive impact on the environment, your local community, and the world. Your skill can be in any category, as long as it has a positive impact on customers.

Inspired to leverage voice technology to drive student engagement, OU embarked on a pilot project to develop Alexa skills with Echo devices. OU’s first skills were a proof of concept to help the university understand how to provide meaningful information with voice.

With finals coming to an end and graduations happening for some, being a college student these past few weeks was no easy task. Nevertheless, students around the world brought their innovations to life by participating in our Hack-Your-World with Amazon Alexa contest. Check out the winners. 

We are happy to announce the Hack Your World with Amazon Alexa contest for university students. This is our second collaboration with MindSumo, a company that focuses on offering students first-hand experience with industry projects. 

When the Alexa Skills Kit (ASK) launched in late 2015, developers began building engaging experiences for voice, ranging from simple to innovative. Today, an interdisciplinary team of students from Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) is pushing the boundaries of what we can achieve. Meet Audrey Higgins (writer), Mohammed Tauseef (AWS and Unity integration), Na-Yeon Kim (2D/3D artist), Longyi Cheng (Unity Gameplay programmer), and Shuang You (3D artist).

Their class assignment: build a prototype, in two weeks, of a fully immersive virtual world. Specifically, the team created A.L.Ex.A. (The Assistant Linked Extemporization Array), a VR experience that follows a talkative repair drone destined to help users (or “guests” as they’re known in the VR world) stranded on remote system Planet 532.

Being a college student is a juggling act. That’s why the inaugural Hack-the-Dorm with Amazon Alexa contest, in collaboration with MindSumo, challenged students to build a new voice controlled Alexa skill to help make life easier and better on campus. A big thank you to the teams of students who submitted their creative and useful skills for the dorm using the Alexa Skills Kit.

The winners are ... 

With Amazon Alexa, developers are creating novel and delightful voice experiences for customers. University students are rethinking the way we live. Meet Adam Betemedhin, an Electrical Engineering major, and Kevin Duong-Tran, a Computer Science major, from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV). Adam and Kevin, along with roughly 20 other students from multi-disciplinary backgrounds at UNLV, are participating in the 2017 Solar Decathlon, a competition sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy that will culminate in October of this year. [Read More]