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.

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.