Amazon Alexa - Beyond the Basics

Advanced Amazon Alexa skills require a more complex set of tools than those described on Amazon's website. Terren Peterson will show you the tools and processes used by Alexa Champions in this course. You will gain experience in designing advanced voice interfaces, learn about Speech Synthesis Markup Language, as well as exploring ways to integrate third-party APIs. You will also learn techniques for adding music and sound to your skills, how analytics can be used to improve performance over time, and how to add visuals on Amazon's Echo Show.

• Learn the basics of the Speech Synthesis Markup Language, (SSML).
• Different analytic methods can be used to track how Alexa skills are used by audiences
• Multiple methods can be used to manage content (e.g., S3, external APIs etc.).
• Use Audacity to add sounds and music into your skills.
• Learn how to display visuals on the Amazon Echo Show touch screen display
• Check out the source code for advanced skills that Alexa has already published

Terren Peterson is an Amazon Alexa Champion, a designation that Amazon gives each year to a select few Alexa developers around the world. He has created many chart-topping Alexa skills such as "Hurricane Center", which provides information about tropical storms based on NOAA data. Terren, a 20-year technology veteran, holds multiple Amazon Web Services certifications and is Head of Technology Infrastructure for Consumer Banking at Capital One. He oversees the bank's transition towards cloud technologies.