As the universe of IoT continues to grow at a rapid pace, our abilities to interact with these devices can be useful. As an added bonus, developing these skills can be fun too!

I’ll take you through my journey of developing an Alexa skill in Python for an Alexa device. I’ll go over how to get code to talk to Alexa and how to dump that code into Lambda for a seamless delivery between Amazon Web Services and the Alexa Skills Kit! Never developed an Alexa skill before? Don’t worry, I hadn’t either. I’ll provide plenty of resources to help get you started on a path you’ll never want to leave as an Alexa developer.

Building an Alexa skill helps:

Further develop your own skills in development

Gain familiarity with Amazon Web Services’ Lambda service which allows you to run code without provisioning or managing servers. BYOC – Bring your own code! (Python, Node.js, Java, and C#).

Gain familiarity with Amazon Web Services CloudWatch service which helps monitor and log activities with your Amazon Web Services resources which is helpful for troubleshooting.

Gain familiarity with the Alexa Skills Kit which is the platform behind Alexa development.

Learn about tools and resources you can take advantage of to ensure you have a meaningful development experience.

I will have some giveaways of at least two echo dots for the audience and potentially AWS credits as well.