Here’s what you missed last week on the Amazon Developer blog:

Train Jam 2017, Here We Come!

Amazon Appstore is officially participating in Train Jam 2017 this year. We are proud to be able to sponsor their diversity initiatives, focused on giving developers from under-represented territories and genders assistance to travel to Chicago, participate in Train Jam, attend GDC, and return home.

Find Experienced Alexa Skill Builders and Tools

Check out the new Agencies and Tools page on the Alexa portal, dedicated to helping organizations, from small businesses to global brands, connect with the agencies, tools and analytics providers that specialize in creating and managing Alexa voice experiences.

AWS re:Invent Alexa Skill Contest Winners

Congratulations to team behind Baby Checkr. Their skill fuses voice and image recognition technologies, making it the perfect skill for parents. And kudos to all of the AWS re:Invent Alexa Skill contestants for their efforts to help accelerate the pace of voice technology innovation.

Evangelists and Where to Find Them: February 2017

From Casual Connect to GDC 2017, here’s where you can find the Amazon Developer Evangelists this February.

Paid User Acquisition: Is It Worth It?

The days of organic user acquisition (UA) out-performing paid UA are behind us. See what DeltaDNA uncovered when they compared average revenue per paying user and use retention rates of these two UA methods.

Students Re-imagine their University Dorms with Amazon Alexa

We recently hosted our inaugural Hack-the-Dorm with Amazon Alexa contest, in collaboration with MindSumo, challenging students to build a new voice controlled Alexa skill to help make life easier and better on campus. Congratulations to the teams who submitted their creative and useful skills for the dorm using the Alexa Skills Kit.

New eBook: Best Practices for Push Notifications

Thinking about using Push Notifications to re-engage your latent user base? We recently sat down with our Developer Evangelists to compile a list of our top tips for developing a well-planned push notification strategy. The result is our newest eBook: Best Practices for Push Notifications.

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