Three months ago, we launched Alexa Champions, a recognition program designed to honor the most engaged developers and contributors in the community. Through their passion and knowledge for Alexa, these individuals educate and inspire other developers in the community – both online and offline.
Today we’re excited to recognize ten new Alexa Champions and to showcase their contributions to the Alexa community on our dedicated gallery. We thank them for all the knowledge they have shared with others and for the tools they have created to make it easier for developers to use the Alexa Skills Kit (ASK) and Alexa Voice Service (AVS).
Meet the new Alexa Champions
Join me in extending a warm welcome to the newest Alexa Champions:
- Andrea Bianco is an active advocate of Alexa in the smart home arena, with dozens of in-home implementations of the Smart Home Skill API and counting. You’ll often find her sharing Alexa knowledge at home automation events, or making feature suggestions in the weekly ASK Developer Office Hours. Learn more about Andrea.
- Darian Johnson won second place in the Best AVS with Raspberry Pi segment of Alexa’s Internet of Voice challenge on Hackster.io with his Mystic Mirror skill. He continues to contribute to the Alexa community by sharing the source code to his projects, providing feedback to other developers, and blogging about expanding the use of Alexa in his home. Learn more about Darian.
- Hicham Tahiri got involved in Alexa skill building in 2015 and crafted a developer toolbox offering a visual conversation design tool with automatic code generation, a community-generated intents library and a voice simulator. He shares his knowledge of voice interfaces, ASK and AVS with the Alexa meetup group he manages in Paris. Learn more about Hicham.
- Joel Evans is the founder of the Boston Echo / Alexa Developers meetup. He regularly creates skills for demonstrations at meetups, presentations, and client meetings for his company, Mobiquity that has developed many skills, both as proof of concepts to share with clients or as published skills in the Alexa catalog for global brands. Learn more about Joel.
- Leor Grebler enables developers to quickly create Alexa voice interactions with the Ubi Portal, a voice prototyping tool, and to test them with the Ubi App for Android powered by the Alexa Voice Service. He shares his knowledge of voice interfaces, ASK, and AVS in daily Medium blog posts and with the Ubiquitous Voice Society Toronto Meetup group he manages. Learn more about Leor.
- Mandy Chan is a serial skill builder who won multiple hackathons with Alexa projects. She gives back to the ASK community by publishing open source projects such as the SSML-Builder npm package and the Alexa-Hackathon-Quick-Starter on GitHub. She also volunteers for the NYC Amazon Alexa Meetup. Learn more about Mandy.
- Oscar Merry has worked with the Alexa technology since November 2015, designing and implementing prototypes for clients across a number of industries and use cases with his voice design agency, Opearlo. He’s been running the London Alexa Devs meetup since July 2016. Learn more about Oscar.
- Ryan Kroonenburg created the “Alexa development for absolute beginners” courses for A Cloud Guru which allows beginner developers and non-developers to learn how to build skills. He regularly shares his passion for Alexa at events like ServerlessConf and the Alexa Devs Dublin meetup. Learn more about Ryan.
- Terren Peterson built multiple Alexa skills, including Hurricane Center which one third place in the first Amazon Alexa Skill Contest on Hackster.io. He integrated AVS with a Raspberry Pi to create a voice activated pitching machine that won first place in the Best ASK with Raspberry Pi segment of Alexa’s Internet of Voice challenge on Hackster.io. Learn more about Terren.
- Tilmann Böhme started the Amazon Alexa Meetup in Berlin to bring people interested in voice interfaces together and to contribute to building a strong Alexa community in Germany. He is regularly invited to give presentations about Alexa and voice interfaces. Learn more about Tilmann.
Get involved
There are many ways you can share educational and inspiring content about AVS and ASK with the Alexa community through your own blog or newsletter, open-source development tools, tutorials, videos or podcasts and social media. You can also organize local meetup groups for like-minded Alexa enthusiasts and developers.
Engage with Alexa evangelists in our weekly live webinars and office hours, share your contributions in the Alexa developer forums or on Hackster.io, and tell us about your #AlexaDevStory on Twitter.
Please join me in welcoming our newest Alexa Champions!
- Marion
Learn More
Check out these Alexa developer resources: