The Future of Conversation, an Alexa Hackathon

The Future Labs a network of innovation spaces and programs that support early-stage startups in New York City, is hosting the Amazon Alexa and Echo Hackathon from Saturday, September 24, 2016 to Sunday, September 25, 2016 at the Digital Future Labs. The Alexa and Echo Hackathon will explore voice-based user interfaces for Alexa, the software that supports Amazon’s Echo hardware.

What is Alexa?

Alexa, the voice service that powers Amazon Echo, provides capabilities, or skills, that enable customers to interact with devices in a more intuitive way using voice. Examples of capabilities through the Alexa Voice Service include the ability to play music, answer general questions, set an alarm or timer, and more.

The Alexa Skills Kit is a collection of self-service APIs, tools, documentation and code samples that make it fast and easy for you to add skills to Alexa. 

At this Hackathon, an Alexa Solutions Architect will be onsite to help you code and easily build and add new capabilities (skills) to Alexa.

Why You Should Learn to create Alexa Skills:

• Once certified, your new skills will be published in the Alexa app which will in and of itself be a great addition to your portfolio.

• Second, you’ll gain experience with three services: Amazon’s Alexa Skills Kit, AWS Lambda (part of Amazon Web Services), and the NodeJS backend JavaScript framework.

You bring:

• Laptop
• Chargers
• Any other hardware (i.e., devices you want to integrate with Alexa)

We supply:

• Breakfast and lunch on Saturday. Breakfast Sunday
• Snacks
• CAFFEINE

Event schedule (tentative):

Day 1: Saturday, September 24, 2016

9 AM - 10AM: Registration &  (It's a Saturday, we'll make sure to have coffee.)
10 - 11:30 AM: Team Formation

12:00 PM: Lunch

1:00 PM: Hacking Begins

7:30 PM: Dinner

Day 2: Sunday, September 25, 2016

10:00 AM - 11:30 AM Last chance to Hack / Breakfast

11:45 AM - 12:45 PM: Demos
12:45PM - 1:00 PM Judging
1:00 PM - 1:30 PM: Winners announced

Prizes:

• Amazon Echos
• Amazon will feature winners on Amazon’s developer blog
• 1 month of free space for the winning team at Digital Future Labs

Registration:

• Each individual participant must register though Eventbrite. 
• Teams will be assembled the morning of day one. Teams can be up to 4 members. 
• Please provide your name and you will given a ID badge and your refunded deposit.

Rules:

• Demos must work. No pure design mockups.
• APIs and libraries are fine (as long as you didn’t write them). Winners may have code reviewed.
• Be Social
• Be active

Social media:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheFutureLabs/

Twitter: @NYUFutureLabs