Announcing the Alexa Skills Challenge: Alexa Conversations Winners!
After months of hard work from Alexa developers around the world, the Alexa Skill Challenge: Alexa Conversations has concluded. The challenge invited developers to create more natural-feeling interactions with fewer lines of code, using the new Alexa Conversations (beta). This week we held our final judging event and determined the grand prize winner from the 10 finalists selected, as well as awarded the 8 category bonus prizes.
Thank you to everyone who participated and worked hard to submit an entry to this challenge. We appreciate your passion and hard work. Most importantly, we loved your feedback on the skill-building experience and the suggested improvements you provided during the process. The tight-knit community that sprang up on Slack and Twitch not only helped each other but made it more fun for all of us. Here’s what participants had to say about their time spent on the Alexa Conversations challenge.
Simplified Code: “We used Alexa Conversations for dialog management, context carryover and state management. Building that scaffolding by hand with intents and session attributes is possible, but it would be really hard and flimsy. Outsourcing the state management piece took a huge burden off the development process,” said John Gillilan, Art Museum skill builder.
More Natural Interactions: Finalist Ace Don Adriatico created A Review Session on the Great Gatsby. “When dealing with an input set as infinite as the English language, Alexa Conversations is a must-have tool,” he reports.
Collaborative Community: “I want to thank the community, especially the Alexa team for your help, guidance, and support. We've never created a Skill from scratch before and, because of this experience, we don't plan to stop!” says contestant Monique Howard, the Smarticles team leader who started the Let’s Color Together skill.
Grand Prize Winner ($20,000)
Art Museum by John Gillilian and Katy Boungard
Art Museum lets you traverse a vast art collection using simple language. Each item is accompanied by a short form audio segment from the museum tour, bringing rich context to each piece as you view it.
“The Art Institute of Chicago is a world-class museum with a world-class API, providing rich metadata and open access to each piece in their collection. We've always been excited by the intersection of short form media and voice, and Alexa Conversations made it possible to create a flexible, robust experience using natural language, audio and visuals. Users can explore the museum at their own pace, in their own way, viewing a dynamic gallery of contextual art assembled at each turn," say John Gillilan and Katy Boungard, the developers of the Art Museum skill.
Watch the submission video and try the skill
Bonus Prize - Best Audio experience ($2,000 USD)
The Conspiracy Theory Escape Room by Vicente Guzmán, Amy Oliver, Danno Tabing, Jessi Willey and Ethel González.
Find the missing moon landing tapes with help from this game’s immersive soundscape.
watch the submission video | try the skill
Bonus Prize - Best Game experience ($2,000 USD)
The Great Expedition by Ben Freiberg.
Pick your team members and go exploring in this self-directed adventure.
watch the submission video | try the skill
Bonus Prize – Best Education and Reference experience ($2,000 USD)
Abhyas Teacher Assistant by Ruthvik Reddy.
A classroom teaching tool that helps educators track student progress practicing English with Alexa.
watch the submission video | try the skill
Bonus Prize – Best Visual experience ($2,000 USD)
Refugee Restrooms by Babu Sabbavarapu and Appala Naidu.
Locate and send safe restrooms in the US based on the user's specific needs.
watch the submission video | try the skill
Bonus Prize - Best Productivity experience ($2,000 USD)
Coffee Club by Dave Curley.
Take the guesswork out of ordering the right coffee for everyone.
watch the submission video | try the skill
Bonus Prize - Best Food and Drink experience ($2,000 USD)
Wine Expert Plus by Eva Sánchez Guerrero.
Just ask Alexa for help pairing wines with food.
watch the submission video | try the skill
Bonus Prize - Best Travel and Transportation experience ($2,000 USD)
Ease My Trip by Angadaveer Singh and Tapan Chauhan.
Provide travel information in different ways to plan your trip.
watch the submission video | try the skill
Bonus Prize - Best Wildcard experience ($2,000 USD)
Drink Enough Water by Matthias Kose and Marcus Kuehn.
Create an individualized reminder for staying hydrated and healthy.
watch the submission video | try the skill
Experience for yourself how developers all over the world used Alexa Conversations to create more natural-feeling voice experiences with fewer lines of code in just a few weeks. As always, share your feedback and questions on the Alexa developer forum and make sure add the "Alexa Conversations" topic to your post.
Visit the Alexa Developer Console to enable the Alexa Conversations beta and publish skills in the en_US locale.
- Read the Alexa Conversations Technical Documentation
- Do the Alexa Conversations Online Tutorial
- Watch the Alexa Conversations Twitch Streams
- Check Out Alexa Conversations GitHub Sample Code
- View Special Content and Community Contributions On-Demand
- Attend the Alexa Live 2020 Session Recap “Build Conversational Interfaces Faster with Alexa Conversations”
Introducing Alexa Conversations (beta)
Alexa Conversations (beta) is now available to help you create more natural-feeling Alexa skills with fewer lines of code.
Enter the Alexa Skills Challenge: Alexa Conversations
We’re thrilled to announce the Alexa Skills Challenge: Alexa Conversations with Devpost, an opportunity to invent the future of voice experiences and compete for more than $100K in prizes.
Introducing Alexa Conversations (preview)
Today we’re excited to announce Alexa Conversations (preview), a new deep learning-based approach that developers can use for creating natural voice experiences on Alexa with less effort, fewer lines of code, and less training data than before.