On Saturday June 4th we bring you the first ever Hackster.io + Amazon Alexa workshop!

Liz Myers, who is a Developer Evangelist at Amazon, will be teaching Alexa Skill Building 101 starting at noon. In this talk, intended for software and hardware developers interested in voice control, home automation, and personal assistant technology, we will walk through the development of a new Alexa skill and incorporate it into a consumer-facing device.

The talk will be followed by lunch and an afternoon of hacking. Finish off the day with dinner and incredible prizes sponsored by Amazon.

Alexa is the speech and personal assistant technology behind Amazon Echo. Today you can use Alexa to listen to music, play games, check traffic and weather, control your household devices such as Philips Hue and Belkin WeMo, and lots more. Alexa offers a full-featured set of APIs and SDKs that you can use to teach her new skills and add her into devices and applications of your own.

Worried that your just a beginner and not much of a coder? Don t be! This Hackathon will be suitable for beginners and pros alike. We have examples and tutorials that will get you up to speed with creating your own amazing voice activated Alexa “Skills” for the Echo – come learn and make new nerdy coder friends! Any experience with JavasScript or Python will be a plus but we have a repository of examples you can simply modify to make your own publishable Alexa Skill. Drop in, bring your laptops, your friends, and plenty of time to hack some uber code and hear what Echo has to say.

At DevelopmentNow, we like learning how to use and program new technology, and the ability to write skills for Amazon's Alexa assistant is pretty exciting. We're hosting a free workshop and hackathon at our offices, during which we'll learn together to write a new Alexa skill, and demonstrate it, in an hour!

Because this will be late October, and because we also like the spooky atmosphere of that time of year, we're going to focus on thinking of skills with a Halloween bent. Given time and interest, we may even be able to put together a decision-tree narration of a haunted house. We're also eager to hear your own ideas and see what all the participants come up with together.

What's the planned schedule?

Our office doors will open at 10 am, and we'll officially kick off the session at 11. We'll share quickstart documents to everyone in attendance, and have a couple of our in-house developers with Alexa experience roaming the place to help figure things out. At 4 pm, we'll wrap up and take turns showing off what we've built.

What are my transport/parking options?

Parking around the east side of the Burnside Bridge is limited, but generally viable on weekends. We're also very close to the MLK and Burnside stop for the A Loop of the Portland Streetcar, or a block from the nearest bus stop on the 19 or 20. We have indoor bike parking as well.

What should I bring to the event?

Please bring a laptop and a willingness to learn! You don't need previous experience. We'll provide power, wifi, workspace, food, cooperative instruction, and our Echo for testing.

Where can I contact the organizer with any questions?

[email protected]

You said there will be food?

Yes! We'll provide coffee and pastries when the office doors open at 10, and order Sizzle Pie around 2 pm for our hard-working participants.

6:00 pm - 7:00 pm John du Pre Gauntt Host and Curator for the Augmented City Podcast and Contributing Writer for the Economist will paint a vision for Chatbots and AI in the near future (~2025) with a special emphasis on autonomous vehicles and other forms of advanced mobility

7:00 pm - 8:00 pm Steve DeRoos, a HP Strategist and Technical Business Architect will share his experiences transforming HP Customer Support through Virtual Agents/Chatbots and Artificial Intelligence.

PDX Chatbots is a group of designers, engineers, innovators and business strategists who are dreaming up the next generation of digital experiences beyond clicks and swipes. From Alexa to Facebook Messenger and Slack to Cortana, get your front row seat to learn, share and inspire as these exciting new experience models gain market share faster than mobile did at its peak growth in the US.

Meetup focus on inspiration, education and collaboration. A happy hour will precede each Meetup with sponsored food and beverages.

Join us for a short demo and discussion on programming Adafruit microcontrollers and an Echo Dot. Ming Rutar two projects she has been working on and would love to hear your suggestions.

If you would like to join the discussion check us out on Zoom https://zoom.us/j/7891236789. If you want to listen, we're also on Facebook Live https://www.facebook.com/KnowledgeMavens/.

Do you want to learn and share your passion in a supportive community? Knowledge Mavens is an ethos of sharing, creativity, and inspiration.

Our Meetup provides an opportunity to "Show and Tell" followed by a feedback and Q&A. You'll have the opportunity to share with our channels such as Meetup, GitHub, YouTube, and Facebook to connect with more passionate people.

The second half of our session we'll collaborate on new topics. The winner wins an award for the most interesting topic and the opportunity to share in an upcoming session.

Check out a smart mirror built with a Raspberry Pi connected to Alexa or Google Assistant. It displays weather, news, youtube videos, and LEDs synchronized to the audio. I'll be sharing the build schematics and parts to anyone who wants to build one.

If you would like to join the discussion check us out on Zoom https://zoom.us/j/7891236789.

Do you want to learn and share your passion in a supportive community? Knowledge Mavens is an ethos of sharing, creativity, and inspiration.

Our Meetup provides an opportunity to "Show and Tell" followed by feedback and Q&A. You'll have the opportunity to share with our channels such as Meetup, GitHub, YouTube, and Facebook to connect with more passionate people.

The second half of our session we'll collaborate on new topics. The winner wins an award for the most interesting topic and the opportunity to share in an upcoming session.

AWS re:Invent is coming up soon in Las Vegas December 2nd - 6th in 2019. Here's more info about the conference https://reinvent.awsevents.com/

In this Meetup, I'm planning to recap my sessions and share my interviews with other attendees. If videos and slides are available publicly in time, I'll share them as well.

Here's my current schedule 1. Finding a needle in a haystack: Use AI to transform content management 2. AWS Certification Exam Readiness: Machine Learning - Specialty 3. Get started with AWS DeepRacer 4. Build accurate training datasets with Amazon SageMaker Ground Truth 5. Build an engaging Alexa skill with Cake Walk 6. Cluster adverse events with Amazon Comprehend Medical & Amazon SageMaker 7. Deep learning applications with PyTorch, featuring Freshworks 8. Building predictive applications with IoT and machine learning

Everyone is welcome to learn or share their experiences.

Be inspired! Knowledge Mavens