by Edward Muldrew

Alexa Skills Challenge: Beyond Voice

As a developer, hackathons have been a norm throughout my career and University life. However, I had never experienced an online hackathon. Which introduces Devpost, a website which allows developers to contribute to an online competition/project generally with varying rewards.

As a keen Alexa skill developer, the ‘Alexa Skills Challenge: Beyond Voice’ was shared to me from member within the Voice community. The basic premise behind the hackathon was that with Alexa devices becoming more and more multimodal such as the Echo Show, Fire TV and Tablets. The skills challenge was an opportunity to create Alexa skills using the various features such as rich sound, visuals, touch and motion.

A great opportunity for a side hustle as a developer and a great entry to the voice community so I wanted to write about the competition and how it benefited me.

Well Organised
One of the great things about the hackathon was how well organized it was. The prizes were set out from the offset, a grand prize of $20,000, 10 finalist prizes of $5,000, $2,000 for a best category prize winner and $50 for the top 300 participants.

The rules and requirements were set out from the get-go on their website https://alexabeyondvoice.devpost.com/. Simply build an Alexa Skill that uses APL for Audio, APL, motion and sensing APIs or Alexa Web API for games.

There was an end date and clear judging criteria based off quality of idea using multimodal technology, quality of the user experience, potential impact and quality of the submission package. Which can level the playing field when competing against top developers or even software companies.

Learning Opportunity
For me personally this was a great learning opportunity. I had created two Alexa skills before entering the hackathon but had never used the APL interface. This broadened my horizons to the potential impact that Alexa skills could have.

Further to this I learned about using the Alexa CLI which enabled easier development using my IDE compared to using the web browser Alexa Developer Console.

Project Based
What I really enjoyed about this experience was that the hackathon was a project. For me personally this allows me to work naturally like I would in industry. I had about two months to complete the project from the end of September to mid-November.

This allowed me to workout a plan for when I could research, develop, test and start to form my submission package. I could then accordingly scale the application and add features accordingly to the time I had left. I felt this allowed me to work on a lot of skills that are required within industry such as prioritization of features, research and planning ideas of which would be best feasible.

In the end I took the approach of building a trivia quiz game designed for kids and families. I added multiplayer options and used visual interfaces with APL. In addition to creating quirky sounds to give feedback to the users as they ventured through the game.

You can see my project here: https://devpost.com/software/language-teacher-ns0xuq?ref_content=user-portfolio&ref_feature=in_progress

Slack Channel & Community
Another great benefit about this hackathon was that the competition provided a slack channel in which you could communicate with other developers and Amazon Alexa developers. This ensured that any problem, bug or difficulty could be solved quickly.

As well as this I got to meet some great people along the way who I still communicate with on Twitter now! It was a great opportunity for someone who is in infancy of their tech career to meet and collaborate with others within the Voice community.

Further to this I have been able to bounce future app ideas off them as well as get feedback upon my current apps. For me this is a great way for any developer to quickly bring their technical skills up to scratch from learning from those with more experience. The skill of networking and having contacts within industry can not be understated so the hackathon gave me a lot back regardless of if I win any prizes or not!

Video & Submission Package
Finally the submission package involved creating a video to showcase your app. I really enjoyed this as months of work could then be put in a short video which is useful to showcase your development efforts as a portfolio or to show future employers. Further to this the submission package asked several questions about challenges faced, accomplishments and a description of what your app does.

Project Gallery
Finally once everyone had submitted their Alexa Skills and submitted their hackathon entry. Devpost created a submission gallery where you could view various developers’ skills. This gave a great opportunity to see what other developers had created and give feedback. Each submission had an opportunity to like and comment each submission package.

Each user has a profile in which you can follow them on Devpost or follow their social media links. This provides a great platform for discovery, collaboration and connection after the hackathon.

You can see this here: https://alexabeyondvoice.devpost.com/project-gallery

Conclusion
To conclude this hackathon was a great opportunity to get a feel for the voice community, build knowledge, leverage skills from idea creation to execution and have a video to document the experience. I would encourage any developers to get involved in Devpost if they want to challenge themselves as a side hustle or get involved with a technology that you are passionate about.

For me it wasn’t about the prizes at stake, but the experience was worthwhile in itself. The only downside I could argue would be that developers could enter apps they had previously created which you could argue an unfair advantage. However, it showed me that any limitations I previously imagined about developing Alexa Skills were not true and that in fact that Alexa can be harnessed to build much greater things by leveraging technology other than purely voice.