The Canadian Life Hacks Hackathon

Do you have what it takes to come up with the next great Amazon Alexa Skill? For participants of Toronto's latest Alexa Dev Day, please join Connected Lab and Amazon on June 23 for the Canadian Life Hacks Hackathon. Working in teams of 3-5, participants will be challenged with the task of building Skills for Alexa, Amazon's cloud-based voice service, that relate to Canadian entertainment, travel, and/or children’s content. #ConnectedHacks WHAT: Canadian Life Hacks Hackathon, hosted by Connected Lab in partnership with Amazon WHEN: Saturday, June 23, 2018, 8:00 am – 9:00 pm WHERE: Connected Lab Headquarters, 370 King St W. Suite 400, Toronto, Ontario, M5V 1J9 WHO:Developers, designers, and makers with experience building for Amazon Alexa. OBJECTIVE Build an Alexa Skill beneficial to Canadians in the areas of entertainment, travel, and/or children’s content. PRIZES First place participants will each receive a $750 travel voucher to visit anywhere in Canada as well as their very own Amazon Echo Spot. Second place participants will each receive an Amazon Echo Spot. ELIGIBILITY The Canadian Life Hacks Hackathon is open to individuals and teams who have reached the age of majority in their eligible jurisdiction of residence at the time of entry, and who have experience developing and/or designing for Amazon Alexa. The team must participate for the duration of the Hackathon and provide a working demo of their Skill at the end to be eligible for prizes. Libraries used must also be credited. Note: Employees of Connected Lab, Amazon, and contractors currently under contract work for Connected Lab or Amazon are not eligible. Software partners and those receiving funding or assistance from Connected Lab or Amazon for application development are not eligible. Any application that is or was funded or compensated, partially or fully, by Connected Lab or Amazon for its development is not eligible for entry. SCHEDULE 8:00 – 8:15 AM: Participant arrival and registration 8:15 – 8:30 AM: Continental breakfast is served 8:30 – 8:45 AM: Opening remarks by Damian McCabe, Co-founder and VP Engineering at Connected Lab, as well as Justin Jeffress, Solutions Architect at Amazon Alexa 8:45 – 9:00 AM: Participants are ushered to private breakout rooms 9:00 AM: Hackathon begins 11:30 – 12:30 PM: Box lunch is served 6:00 PM: Hackathon submissions due to the judging panel 6:15 – 8:15 PM: Dinner is served while teams present submissions to judging panel 8:15 – 8:40 PM: Judging panel evaluates submissions 8:40 – 9:00 PM: Panel to reveal winners and distribute prizing FAQ Do I need to come with a pre-formed team?No! Though you may form a team of your own (3-5 members per team), individuals may apply on their own; they will be put into groups. What do I need to bring?You will need to bring a laptop running Linux, MacOS, or Windows. Don’t forget your charger! What accounts do I need?You will need to set up an AWS account and an Amazon Developer account. What should I install?You should install the ask cli! With it you can dramatically reduce the amount of time and effort required to build and update your Skill. Are there any code samples I should check out?Yes! Take a look at the care package! You should also check out the quiz game sample Skill to get started with display directives and the display interface and template reference technical documentation. Any more questions? Write us at hello@connectedlab.com with the subject line "Hackathon Question."