Why I'm looking forward to Alexa Live: Daniel Mittendorf, CTO, Beyto GmbH

Amazon announced today that it will host its annual Alexa Live event for developers on July 20 at 9:00 a.m. PST. Alexa Live 2022 is free to attend, fully online, and developers can sign up at the event registration page. 

Daniel Mittendorf is the CTO of Beyto, a Berlin-based digital agency that was founded in 2019, with an expertise in the field of voice and conversational Al. In this interview Mittendorf talks about why developers should sign up for Alexa's premier event Alexa Live. 

Tell us about your prior development experience.

I have been developing Alexa Skills since 2017. The  Alexa skill that I developed is called Stream Player, and is now available in five languages across nine countries. Prior to developing for Alexa, I was a web-developer and project manager working for e-commerce brands. As I was familiar with HTML, CSS and Javascript, it was very easy to get building for Alexa, which is based on node.js. The Alexa development documentation was very helpful on getting started on our skill development journey, as were the GitHub sample projects.  

Why has attending Alexa Live in the past been useful to you?

When Alexa Live started in 2020 I wasn't sure what to expect. However, the first event turned out to be a great resource for developers, agencies, and device-builders to get the latest information about newest developments, SDK, functionalities and general know-how. 

Alexa Live was  especially useful for us as an agency, because we were able to form informed opinions on where the Alexa product teams were heading, what features were upcoming, and in general, what to expect going forward. This helped us develop strategies for all our clients, and in the process boost customer satisfaction.

Alexa Live is also a go-to-event for the voice and Alexa developer community, and a great venue to connect with fellow developers, and the Alexa team. 

Why are you looking forward to this year’s event?

I'm really looking forward to Alexa Live 2022 to see what new features will be introduced to help discoverability, monetization and to help us focus on creating better ambient experiences.

I'll give one example of a particularly meaningful customer experience we were able to develop with Alexa. At the end of 2021, we developed two projects focused on helping elderly adults live more fulfilling lives. Voice is a more natural and intuitive interface than say a smartphone or a PC, and Alexa can help people who might not be tech savvy live fulfilling lives.

We still have a way to go when it comes to developing truly ambient experiences, and I am looking forward to attending Alexa Live and learning more about how we can all work together in making this future a reality.