Alexa is Amazon’s cloud-based voice service available on tens of millions of devices from Amazon and third-party device manufacturers. With Alexa, you can build natural voice experiences that offer customers a more intuitive way to interact with the technology they use every day.

Pre-Requisites

• Developers to work on building skills.
• Developer.amazon.com account and verified AWS account created in advance. AWS Account takes 24 hours to verify so please do it before the workshop.
• Attendees to carry their own laptops.

RSVP

Agenda

9:00 AM - Intro to Alexa

• The future of voice-based experiences
• Overview of Echo, Alexa, and the tools used to build Alexa skills.  

9:30 AM - Skill Building Basics 

• Intro to Intents, Slots, Samples
• Handling Requests with AWS Lambda and Node.JS
• Build your first skill:  https://alexa.design/factskill
• Certify and Publish your skill

11:00 AM - Voice Design

• The principles of Voice Design
• Best practices for engaging skills
• Brainstorming and flow diagrams
• Using the Skill Builder tool


12:30 PM – Lunch

1:30 PM – Skill Building (cont.)

• Remembering with Session Attributes
• Building skills with data and lists
• Adding Long term memory with Dynamo DB
• Build the High Low game: http://alexa.design/highlow

3:00 PM – Break

3.30 PM – Conversational UI

• Multi-turn dialogs
• Intro to intent and slot confirmations
• Slot filling

4.30 PM - New Features and APIs

• Introduction to Alexa’s newest features
• Demos
• Wrap up