A few months ago we introduced Flask-Ask, a new Python framework for rapid Alexa skill development created by Alexa Champion John Wheeler. Today, due to popular demand, John shares how you can deploy your Alexa skills built with Flask-Ask to AWS Lambda, a service that lets you run code without provisioning or managing servers, which you can use to build serverless applications. Check out John’s technical tutorial below, connect with him on Twitter, and hear more about Flask-Ask in the Alexa Dev Chat podcast episode 10.

In our first post, Flask-Ask and ngrok were used to rapidly create a memory game skill and test it locally. This post shows how to use Flask-Ask with the Zappa framework to quickly deploy skills to AWS Lambda. As of this writing, AWS Lambda supports Python 2.7. This tutorial assumes Python 2.7 is installed on your Windows, Mac, or Linux system.

Zappa, a serverless Python framework, uses a combination of AWS components to emulate the WSGI environment on Lambda that Python web frameworks require. Since Flask-Ask is a Flask extension and Flask requires a WSGI environment, Zappa is the perfect fit for deploying Flask-Ask skills to AWS Lambda. To demonstrate, we'll create an Alexa skill that uses the GitHub API to return how many stars, watchers, and forks a repository has.

Let's get started!

A few months ago we shared a free video course on Alexa development by A Cloud Guru, a pioneering serverless education company in the cloud space. Today, we’re excited to announce a new advanced course on Alexa skill building instructed by Alexa Champion Oscar Merry for A Cloud Guru. As the co-founder and head of technology at Opearlo, a voice design agency, Oscar has extensive experience with the Alexa Skills Kit (ASK). He has worked with the technology since November 2015, designing and building skills for clients across a number of industries and use cases. He’s also been giving back to the community and sharing his ASK knowledge by running the London Alexa Devs meetup since July 2016.

Today, we’re excited to announce a new, free video series on Alexa development by Coding Dojo, a pioneer in the coding bootcamp space that offers in-person and online classes. These Coding Dojo YouTube videos will help aspiring and established Python coders learn about building skills for Alexa, the voice service that powers Amazon Echo.

Here is what you can expect to learn in Coding Dojo's Alexa Skill Training series:

• The videos will introduce Alexa-enabled devices like Echo and talk about the Alexa Skills Kit, a collection of self-service APIs, tools, documentation and code samples that make it fast and easy for you to add skills to Alexa.

• The video instructor will take you through the process of creating an Alexa skill built in Python using an AWS Lambda function as the backend to handle the skill's requests. You will learn the steps to create a Coding Dojo skill that can tell you about the coding bootcamp and their instructors.

• The videos will cover how to configure a skill in the Amazon developer portal, and will discuss setting up the interaction model, intent schema, and sample utterances, and testing the skill.

• With a code walkthrough you will take a closer look at the code that’s allowing your Alexa skill and Lambda function to interact.

• Finally, the video training will walk you through creating your own backend using Flask-Ask, a Python framework and Flask extension created by John Wheeler, an Alexa Champion. You will also learn how ngrok can allow you to test your skill locally. The series will end with an overview of AWS Elastic Beanstalk and its advantages.

Watch the Alexa video series for free on YouTube today.

Learn more about Alexa with Coding Dojo

In addition to the videos, Coding Dojo announced a new in-person and online class, as well as an Alexa hackathon that will train Python developers to create skills. The Alexa skill building class is available as a module in the Python stack at Coding Dojo’s 14-week onsite and 20-week online coding bootcamp. Finally, Coding Dojo will host an Alexa skills hackathon led by Amazon Alexa employees on February 20, 2017 in San Jose. Anyone interested in participating should contact Coding Dojo's San Jose campus.

Check out the full announcement by Coding Dojo here.

The name of Harrison Kinsley may not ring a bell but if you’re into Python programming you’ve probably heard the name “Sentdex”. With over 125,000 subscribers to his YouTube channel and about 800 free tutorials on his associated website, Harrison has become a reference for learning materials on Python programming.

Today, we’re excited to share a new Alexa skills tutorial for Python programmers available for free on PythonProgramming.net with companion video screencasts to follow along. This three-part tutorial series provides the instructions and code snippets to build an Alexa skill in Python that goes to the World News subreddit, a popular feed on news aggregator Reddit, and reads the latest headlines. To follow along, you will need an Alexa-enabled device, ngrok or an https enabled server, and an Amazon Developer account.

In this tutorial, you can expect to learn:

• How to get started with Flask-Ask, a Flask extension created by Alexa Champion John Wheeler that makes building Alexa skills easy with a Python logic.
• How to create the get_headlines function, which is where you'll use Python to get the headlines from Reddit.
• How to test your skill by setting it up in the Amazon Developer console and testing it on an Alexa-enabled device.

Get started with the Alexa tutorial series here. For more Python tutorials, head to Harrison’s website.

Happy coding!

Marion

Learn more

Check out these Alexa developer resources:

• Alexa Skills Kit (ASK)
• Alexa Voice Service (AVS)
• Alexa Dev Chat Podcast
• Alexa Developer Forums
• Alexa Skills Kit Training
• Advanced Technical ASK Training by Big Nerd Ranch
• Alexa Developers videos on YouTube

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.

The Alexa team is excited to be collaborating with Udacity on a new Artificial Intelligence Nanodegree program. Udacity is a leading provider of cutting-edge online learning, with a focus on in-demand skills in innovative fields such as Machine Learning, Self-Driving Cars, Virtual Reality, and Artificial Intelligence.  

“The Alexa team is dedicated to accelerating the field of conversational artificial intelligence. Udacity’s new nanodegree for AI engineers is aligned with our vision to advance the industry. We’re excited for students to learn about our work at Amazon and to build new skills for Alexa as part of the course.”

– Rohit Prasad, VP & Head Scientist, Alexa

Learn more about the Artificial Intelligence Nanodegree program in this guest post by Christopher Watkins, Senior Writer at Udacity.

Few topics today are as compelling as artificial intelligence. From ethicists to artists, physicians to statisticians, roboticists to linguists, everyone is talking about it, and there is virtually no field that stands apart from its influence. That said, there is still so much we don’t know about the future of artificial intelligence. But, that is honestly part of the excitement!

What we DO know is that world-class, affordable AI education is still very hard to come by, which means unless something changes, and unless new learning opportunities emerge, the field will suffer for a lack of diverse, global talent.

Fortunately, something IS changing. We are so excited to announce the newest offering from Udacity, the Artificial Intelligence Nanodegree program!

“This is truly a global effort, with global potential. We believe AI will serve everyone best if it’s built by a diverse range of people.” —Sebastian Thrun (Founder, Udacity)

With the launch of this program, virtually anyone on the planet with an Internet connection (and the relevant background and skills) will be able to study to become an AI engineer. If AI is the future of computer science—and it is—then our goal is to ensure that everyone who wishes to be a part of this future can do so. We want to see every aspiring AI engineer find a job and advance their career in this extraordinary field.

Apply to the Artificial Intelligence Nanodegree program today!

Collaborating With Industry Leaders

To help achieve these goals, we are collaborating with an amazing roster of industry-leading companies, including Amazon Alexa, IBM Watson, and Didi Chuxing. In order to provide our students with the highest quality, most cutting-edge curriculum possible, we are building the Artificial Intelligence Nanodegree program in close partnership with IBM Watson. To support the career goals of our students, we have also established hiring partnerships with both IBM Watson and Didi Chuxing.

Amazon Alexa is the voice service that powers Amazon Echo and enables people to interact with the world around them in a more intuitive way using only their voice. Through a series of free, self-service, public APIs, developers, companies, and hobbyists can integrate Alexa into their products and services, and build new skills for Alexa, creating a seamless way for people to interact with technology on a daily basis.  

Today, we’re excited to announce a new, free video course on Alexa development by A Cloud Guru, a pioneering serverless education company in the cloud space. Instructed by Ryan Kroonenburg, an Amazon Web Services (AWS) Community Hero, the “Alexa development for absolute beginners” course allows beginner developers and non-developers to learn how to build skills for Alexa, the voice service that powers Amazon Echo.

Here is what you can expect to learn in this two-hour course in 12 lessons:

• This beginner guide to Alexa will walk you through setting up an AWS account, registering for a free Amazon Developer account, and then building and customizing two Alexa skills with templates available on GitHub.
• The course also shows Mac users how to use the interactive story tool to create amazing interactive stories.
• Finally, you will learn how to create your own mp3 files, where you narrate, and how to add background music and sound effects. You will see how to convert mp3 files to an Alexa-friendly format, put them on Amazon S3, and then reference them in the graphical user interface (GUI) using Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML).

“All in all, it's a great course and it’s even accessible to non-developers, mums and dads who haven’t used Alexa or Amazon Web Services before! We made this available to the general public and give them an everyday use case for AWS Lambda, Amazon DynamoDB, and S3. We can’t wait to see what people build for Alexa.” – Ryan Kroonenburg, instructor and founder of A Cloud Guru.

Watch the course for free today.

Dive Deeper with Alexa Development

A Cloud Guru also offers an extended version of the course. Cloud Solution Engineer Nick Triantafillou will teach you how to build your own Alexa device with a Raspberry Pi, a MicroSD card, a speaker, a USB microphone, and Alexa Voice Service. Learn how to make Alexa rap to Eminem, how to read Shakespeare, how to use iambic pentameter and rhyming couplets with Alexa, and more. This five-hour video course in 47 lessons also covers additional skill templates available on GitHub to customize and build new capabilities for Alexa.

Watch the extended course.

Check out these Alexa developer resources:

• Alexa Skills Kit (ASK)
• Alexa Voice Service (AVS)
• Alexa Dev Chat Podcast
• Alexa Developer Forums
• Alexa Skills Kit Training
• Advanced Technical ASK Training by Big Nerd Ranch
• Alexa Developers videos on YouTube

We are excited to launch a recognition program that honors the most engaged developers and contributors in the community. These individuals are educating and inspiring other developers in the community online and offline. They are actively and independently sharing their passion and knowledge of Alexa with the community. We’re proud to call them our “Alexa Champions”.

Today we recognize the initial group of ten Alexa Champions and showcase their contributions to the Alexa community in a 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 Alexa Champions

Join me in welcoming the Alexa Champions:

• April Hamilton was one of the first developers to join the private beta of the Alexa Skills Kit and to get skills certified in 2015. She curates the LoveMyEcho.com blog daily and shares tips and tricks with developers in her weekly ASK Dev Tuesday series. Learn more about April.
• Brian Donohue started a local meetup group for Alexa enthusiasts and developers in New York which now counts over 400 members. For the first event, he created a “Hello world” template to show attendees how to build their first Alexa skill. Learn more about Brian.
• Eric Olson a.k.a. Galactoise is one of the most active contributors in the Alexa forums with over 280 reputation points. He co-created the Alexa Skills Kit Responder that lets you mock skill responses to your Echo and gives you the ability to rapidly validate your content. Learn more about Eric.
• John Wheeler is the creator of Flask-Ask, an Alexa Skills Kit Framework for Python that enables rapid skill development. He also created AlexaTutorial.com, a resource for leveling-up quickly with Flask-Ask and the Alexa Skills Kit. Learn more about John.
• Mark Carpenter has been publishing the ASK Dev Weekly newsletter since September 2015. He was the architect of the Alexa Project curriculum that is offered to Bloc bootcamp students. He publishes the Alexa Skill of the Day apps which surface one exemplary Alexa skill each day. Learn more about Mark.
• Matt Kruse created the alexa-app framework and the alexa-app-server container for hosting javascript-based skills. He also published open-source code on GitHub for integration with IFTTT and a “find my iPhone” skill using the find-my-iphone module. Learn more about Matt.
• Rick Wargo released the alexa-skill-template, a Node.js development environment for Alexa skills authored in JavaScript and hosted locally for testing and in AWS Lambda for production with support for DynamoDB. He’s s an active participant in other open source Alexa projects. Learn more about Rick.
• Sam Machin got started with Alexa at the BattleHack world finals in November 2015. He published several tutorials on GitHub to help teach others how to turn a RaspberryPi or a CHIP into an Alexa client with the Alexa Voice Service. His alexaweb project was the inspiration for Echosim.io. Learn more about Sam.
• Steven Arkonovich was an Alexa enthusiast from the very beginning, writing Alexa skills before there even was ASK. He developed a Ruby framework for quickly creating Alexa skills as web services. He is one of the most active contributors in the Alexa forums. Read more about Steven.
• Walter Quesada created a video course for Pluralsight that teaches the foundations of developing voice-enabled skills for Echo and building custom Alexa skills in C# and ASP.NET Web API. He also talked about Alexa skill development at numerous tech events. Learn more about Walter.

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.

The Amazon Alexa team has collaborated with Big Nerd Ranch, known globally for its highly effective immersive development bootcamps and app development services, to develop deep technical training courses for the Alexa Skills Kit. Today we launch a new developer education experience that showcases all the free learning materials created in collaboration with Big Nerd Ranch.

Our six educational modules will dive into building voice user interfaces using the Alexa Skills Kit. The training materials will teach you about the Alexa skill architecture and interface configuration, slots and utterances, sessions and voice user interfaces, persistence, account linking, and certification and testing.

Each module page features a variety of learning materials:

• Short and sweet videos you can easily share, save for later, or add to your own playlist on YouTube,
• Learning objectives that summarize what you will learn,
• Reference links to find more about Alexa Skills Kit features and technologies covered in the training,
• Code samples on GitHub to follow along and build custom Alexa skills,
• Condensed posts published on the Alexa blog,
• Complete study guides to learn more and solve bonus challenges.

Start learning: check out our new developer education pages.

Learn More

Check out these Alexa developer resources:

• Alexa Skills Kit (ASK)
• Big Nerd Ranch blog series
• Video playlist on YouTube
• Alexa Developer Forums
• Knowledge Base
• Alexa Skills Kit Training
• Developer Office Hours

Today, we’re excited to announce a new Alexa skills course available on Pluralsight, a global leader in online learning for technology professionals. The new course is focused on building custom Alexa skills in C# and ASP.NET Web API. In this four-module course, “Developing Alexa Skills for Amazon Echo”, Alexa developer and Pluralsight author Walter Quesada teaches the foundations of developing voice experiences for Amazon Echo and other Alexa-enabled devices. First, you'll learn the differences between Echo and Alexa, as well as the differences between the Alexa Voice Service and the Alexa Skills Kit. Next, you will quickly evaluate the 'Hello World' node.js sample code provided by Amazon. Finally, you will learn the certification process and requirements, publication stages, and how to create new versions of live skills. By the end of this course, you'll be better prepared to build and publish Alexa skills, or capabilities, for Alexa, the voice service that powers Echo.

Watch the video series for free today.

“I’m excited for developers in the Pluralsight community to watch this first ever course on developing Alexa skills in C# and .NET. I can’t wait to see what you build. Let me know in the Pluralsight discussion forums.” – Walter Quesada, Pluralsight author

Watch Alexa Skills Kit Webinar by Alexa Evangelist, Dave Isbitski

If you need more information about Alexa before getting started, Dave Isbitski, Chief Evangelist for Alexa and Echo, has got you covered. In this exclusive webinar created for Pluralsight, Dave will walk you through the world of Alexa Skills Kit and how you can create your own voice-driven experience. The webinar starts by diving into the basics of Alexa, the SDKs, and resources to get started. Next, you’ll learn how to build an Alexa skill quickly by walking through code and interaction models.

Watch this webinar to learn more about the Alexa Skills Kit today.

Learn More

Check out these Alexa developer resources:

• Alexa Skills Kit (ASK)
• Alexa Skills Kit Training
• Developer Office Hours
• Alexa Developer Forums
• Knowledge Base

Last month we released the first two videos in the Alexa video series created by developer education company Big Nerd Ranch. You can find parts 1 and 2 on the official YouTube Alexa Developers channel. Today we are excited to reveal the next two videos in the Big Nerd Ranch series on how to develop Alexa skills locally with Node.js.

In part 3 of 6, “Sessions and Voice User Interfaces”, we will learn about user sessions. This feature allows an Alexa skill to break more complicated data requirements into a series of steps spanning multiple requests to the skill service. We’ll also learn about Amazon’s voice user interface requirements. Following these requirements is important for getting a skill certified for public availability in the Alexa app. Lastly, we’ll introduce home cards. Cards are a graphical user interface element that can be sent from a skill to the Alexa app.

In part 4 of 6, “Persistence”, we will discuss how to link an Alexa skill with a database so that it can save an unfinished user interaction for later use in another session. Having the ability to persist data between Alexa sessions opens the door for far more versatile and sophisticated skills. We will see how to use Amazon DynamoDB to easily read and write data from an AWS Lambda function skill. We will use a library called Dynasty to interact with Amazon DynamoDB and handle asynchronous results more easily and elegantly.

Stay tuned for the last two videos from Big Nerd Ranch later this month.

Learn More

Check out these Alexa developer resources:

• Alexa Skills Kit (ASK)
• Big Nerd Ranch blog series
• Introduction to Voice Design – Udemy course
• Alexa Developer Forums
• Knowledge Base
• Alexa Skills Kit Training
• Developer Office Hours

A year ago we launched the Alexa Skills Kit to allow developers to build new voice capabilities, called skills, for Alexa. Since then, we’ve seen many Alexa developers start independent meetup groups in their local communities. The purpose of these groups are to network with other Alexa enthusiasts, share Alexa skill development knowledge, and build great voice user experiences.

We’ve curated a list of upcoming community-run Alexa meetups and local groups you can join. Thank you to the community leaders who volunteer their time to organize these local events and continue to contribute to the vibrant Alexa developer community.

Attend a July Meetup Event

Find an event near you, sign up, and meet fellow Alexa developers in your city:

• San Diego, CA – Tuesday, July 5  | 7 p.m. – 8 p.m. PT | Sign up
• Boston, MA – Wednesday, July 6 | 6 p.m. – 8 p.m. ET |  Sign up (Virtual Kickoff)
• Grand Rapids, MI – Monday, July 11 | 5:30 p.m. - 7:30 p.m. ET | Sign up
• San Francisco, CA – Monday, July 18 | 6:30 p.m. - 8:30 p.m. PT | Sign up
• Appleton, WI – Wednesday, July 20 | 6:00 p.m. CT | Sign up
• New York, NY – Wednesday, July 20 | 6:30 p.m. - 9:30 p.m. ET | Sign up

Join an Alexa Meetup Group

So far, we’ve heard about more than ten Alexa-focused meetup groups run by the community. Did you create an Alexa meetup group that is not listed below? Let us know by tweeting @AlexaDevs.

Earlier this year we announced that Amazon was teaming up with developer education company Big Nerd Ranch to deliver immersive, free training for the Alexa Skills Kit (ASK). The training shows you how to develop Alexa skills locally with Node.js, from setting up your development environment to submitting a skill for certification and more complex ASK features like account linking and persistence. You can find a recap of all the blog posts published for the training series here.

Today we are excited to release the first two videos in the Big Nerd Ranch video series. These videos kick off the official Alexa Developers channel on YouTube.

In the first video, “Hello, Alexa!”, we’ll introduce the Alexa Skills Kit and teach you how to create Alexa skills, or capabilities, for Alexa. We will build and deploy a basic skill. This skill will be called the “Greeter” skill, and will say hello to users when they invoke the skill using the words that we specify.

In the second video, “Slots and Slot Types”, we will see several new features of the skill interaction model that let us build more sophisticated skills. We will expand on what we learned with the Greeter skill by building a more feature-rich skill called “Airport Info”. Airport Info will make requests to the Federal Aviation Administration’s JSON backed web service, and inform users if there is any delay at an airport that they specify.

Stay tuned for more videos from Big Nerd Ranch in July.

Learn More

Check out these Alexa developer resources:

• Alexa Skills Kit (ASK)
• Big Nerd Ranch blog series
• Introduction to Voice Design – Udemy course
• Alexa Developer Forums
• Knowledge Base
• Alexa Skills Kit Training
• Developer Office Hours

Today, I’m excited to announce a collaboration between Geekwise Academy and Amazon Alexa. Geekwise Academy is an accelerated training program for current and aspiring technologists in Fresno, California. Geekwise Academy gives students in this area an opportunity to fulfill their dreams by way of providing the latest in technical training.  

Since opening their doors in June 2013, Geekwise Academy has educated more than 3,500 students in the areas of robotics, video game design, web design, and application development. Starting July 25, Geekwise Academy students will be able to attend the first Amazon Alexa Skills Course in Fresno, California. During the four-week in-person training, students will learn about the Alexa Skills Kit to develop new voice user experiences called "skills" for Alexa. Alexa is the voice service that powers the popular Amazon Echo and other Alexa-enabled devices like the Amazon Echo Dot and Amazon Tap. Students will gain expertise in voice design and work on their own voice user interactions with the goal to get their Alexa skills live in the Alexa App upon certification.

The training program will cover various topics including setting up a development environment, building the interaction model of a skill, testing and debugging, using AWS Lambda for hosting source code, handling queries to third-party APIs, and connecting to custom hardware. A little bird (Geekwise Academy’s nerdy owl mascot) tells us there will be an exciting robotics project included in the Alexa curriculum!

The course will be held at Geekwise Academy within the Bitwise South Stadium technology hub in Downtown Fresno – home to over 100 technology companies. Sessions will run three hours per day, five days a week, for four weeks.

Sign up to save your spot.

When I was first introduced to Zach Feldman, Chief Academic Officer and Co-Founder of The New York Code + Design Academy, I knew I was talking with an Alexa connoisseur. Before Amazon publicly released the Alexa Skills Kit, Zach was talking about how to add capabilities to Alexa. Couple this with publishing alexa-home, a popular project on GitHub to use Amazon Echo to control home automation software, before we even released the Smart Home Skill API. Zach has always shown a keen interest in the voice space. Fast forward a year later, it made complete sense to bring Zach’s knowledge of Alexa development to The New York Code + Design Academy.

Today, I’m excited to announce a collaboration between The New York Code + Design Academy (NYCDA) and Amazon Alexa. NYCDA has been training developers – at all levels – with hands-on, intensive workshops in web and mobile app development for the past three years.

This summer, NYCDA students will be able to attend the first in-person training on building Alexa skills with Ruby and Sinatra as the language and framework of choice. Students will begin by gaining an understanding of the Alexa Skills Kit (ASK). From there, they’ll move on to building an Alexa skill together as a class with both a simple skill and one that accesses an external API. They’ll be able to test their voice user experiences with Amazon Tap speakers, Alexa-enabled devices provided by the school. The course will wrap up with an independent final project and will walk students through the process of certification and publication of their first Alexa skill. Classes will run from August 9, 2016 through September 27, 2016. To enroll, students can apply here.

Wait, there’s more. Zach will be hosting a free lecture on the Alexa skill infrastructure and what goes into building your first skill on June 21, 2016 at 6:30 p.m ET at NYCDA’s headquarters in New York City. If you’re in the area don’t miss this opportunity to meet him, learn more about Alexa skill development, and ask questions about NYCDA’s 8-week Alexa course. Save your spot.

“Amazon Alexa is one of the most compelling new software and hardware integrations I've seen in a while! I can't wait to bring the power of Alexa to our students and the Ruby development community.” - Zach Feldman, Chief Academic Officer and Co-Founder of The New York Code + Design Academy

Learn more about the Alexa course from NYCDA here.

-Marion