API.hack | Alexa, May 13

Who: Bellingham Entrepreneurs
Where: Invent Coworking, 114 W Magnolia St. Suite #505, Bellingham, WA 98225
When: May 13, 5:30 pm – May 14 @ 9:00 pm
What: Voice-control technology has finally matured to a point where it is being adopted by the majority. Siri, Cortana, and Google have all contributed to this adoption and now Amazon has joined the party with Alexa. Less than a year old, Alexa has already made a sizable impact on the world. This is because users interface with Alexa through the Amazon Echo device, which can easily connect to other devices on the cloud. Even more exciting is that with the help of hardware like Raspberry Pi and Arduino, essentially anything electronic can now be voice-controlled with the proper hacking, and so that’s exactly what API.hack | Alexa is all about!

The API.hack | Alexa hackathon will take place on Friday, May 13th and Saturday, May 14th at Invent Coworking in Bellingham, WA. On Friday evening, dinner will be provided and staff from Amazon will teach a workshop on how to use the Alexa Skills Kit and the Smart Home Skill API. After the conclusion of the workshop, we’ll adjourn for the evening and return the next morning to kick off the development portion of the hackathon.

Saturday will begin with breakfast and team formation (maximum of 4 people per team) with lunch and dinner served later in the day. Once teams have been formed, Amazon will provide each team with a device to work with as well as expertise on how to use Echo and its API. We’ll finish out the event with demos, judging and awards on Saturday night. A judging panel will select the best project of the day and the winning team will receive a prize package that includes an Echo device for each team member!