Update: Join over 11,500 students in the Techustler Course Series. You don’t want to miss this learning opportunity. 

If you ever wanted to understand the space of Voice Apps or build them yourself, then take my course "Intermediate Amazon Alexa Development". I designed it in a practical way so that when you finish the content you can immediately put it into use with your Amazon Echo or online counterpart.

Now, why should you build Alexa Skills?

The biggest industries in technology are surrounded by AI, Bots, and Voice technology. Voice technology I believe will be the new 21st user interface that will not only understand basic commands, but will be so smart to understand anything you tell it. This is why Amazon is making a big bet with Alexa which it plans to generate close to $11 billion dollars by 2020. They know something about Amazon Echo which is why now is the best time to learn these skills before the mainstream starts developing applications. We all know the story about apps for the smartphones, this is the same thing. 

This course contains over 50 lectures and 1.5 hrs of content. It's designed for beginners to play with new platforms in the voice space. You’ll learn the tools needed to build Alexa Skills, how Alexa Skills work, and eventually publish a skill to Amazon's Alexa store. 

Course Structure

The course follows a familiar structure where in each video I will teach the concepts followed by a challenge or practice question. If your goal is to become a better developer, you should understand node.js, server side development and how to access certain APIs to build better Alexa Skills.

1. Learn about the new AWS Lambda and Alexa Developer Services Interfaces. (Updated July 2018)

2. Learn how to design an Alexa Skill through Voice User Principles

3. Learn Basic Javascript Development with a hint of Nodejs framework

4. Understand Alexa Skill Development: Intent Schemas, Slots, Invocation Names, Lambda functions, Endpoints

5. Understand OAuth and how Account Linking works with Skills

6. Connect with Third Party APIs (Game of Thrones API) to process information and output results

7. Learn to create multi-sessions, save data with DynamoDB, debug with AWS Cloudwatch

8. Create Alexa Skills through the Command Line Interface (CLI)

9. Use the following technologies: AWS Lambda, AWS Cloudwatch, AWS DynamoDB, Alexa Command Line Interface (CLI), Alexa IAM

Environment Setup

This course aims to simulate a live in-person course as much as possible. After you finish each lecture, you should practice and try the solution on your own. You learn the best by practicing and doing. 

Challenges

At the end of each section, you will be asked to complete a challenge to test your knowledge in Alexa Development.  

Testimonials from other Techustler Courses and the Instructor

“Great set of videos Nick! I really liked the format of the videos with you in the corner of the screen showing us how to use the website. Cool songs you use at the beginning of each video. It really gives off the vibe that your course is hip and up-to-date with modern times. You do a great job of keeping of with the times. Stay modern, but classy at the same time Nick!” - Penelope

“Nicholas, very good course on bots! I especially enjoyed that you provided us the opportunity to build bots in a hands-on fashion. Your course sections are very organized and I didn't have to guess to know what I was getting myself into. It is clear you are very knowledgeable as an instructor and have a real connection to your course material. I look forward to taking another course with you!” - Rahul

"This is a great course. Teacher is clear at every step. We learn concrete skills to get hands on experience....that is how one should learn. Thank you for making this course available!" - Janice Cook

"Nick teaches Alexa at a nice pace. Content is updated." - Nadine Fisher

"This course is fantastic! It got me up and running on Alexa in very little time. There are a couple places I had to debug a little to get it running, but I look at it as good exercise." - Craig Dugas

What is the target audience?

This course is designed for people with little or no experience in javascript which is needed to make Alexa skills. By the end of the course, you’ll have valuable skills that will help you be creative and resourceful in your pursuit of building products (hopefully in the voice space :)

Next Steps

Now it's time to become a Techustler and join me in registering for the course. I can’t wait to have you on board!