An Introduction to this Alexa Learning Journey

So if you’ve visited my site at all in the past, you’ll notice this is the most blogging I’ve done in…ever? Put another way, a significant confluence of factors has dialed up my motivation to doggedly pursue learning and growth. So, here we are at learning Alexa skills!

A few weeks ago, I was suckered by the cheap promise of a free hoodie from Amazon, in exchange for building and publishing my first Amazon skill. You can experience the equally cheap output of that effort by saying, “Alexa, start silly marketing strategies” (again and again.)

Is it a good skill? No! Nor am I going to pull a Dollar Shave Club here either. It’s a bad skill! It’s not interactive. You just have to keep asking it over and over for some dumb buzzword-laden sentences. I promise I only account for 75% of the utterances. 🙂

Honestly, I’m thrilled to have published an Alexa skill. But there’s so much more out there! Thus, I’m embarking on yet another educational journey, this one into Amazon Alexa Voice Skill Development.

Getting Set Up with Resources You Need for Alexa Skill Development

The instructions below are for PC only. Apologies, Mac users!

1. You need to create a folder directory in which we’ll be housing our various materials and code.
2. Visit the Alexa Skills Kit JS Git Hub page and download all materials as a ZIP.
   1. 
3. Once you’ve downloaded the ZIP file, move it from your default Downloads directory, and into the folder you created in Step 1.
4. Extract the ZIP file. The unzipped folder should be named, by default, “alexa-skills-kit-js-master”. Within the unzipped folder is yet another folder of the same name.
5. Take the all the contents within the two folders described above, and move them into the “Alexa” directory, higher up.
   1. Move the contents from the “samples” folder into the main “Alexa” directory, so the skill folders (spaceGeek, reindeerGames, etc.) are in the umbrella directory.
6. When you’ve completed Step 5, you should be left with A) Three text files, and a bunch of skill folders, B) an empty “samples” folder [A&B you moved up two directories into the “Alexa” umbrella folder], C) an empty “alexa-skills-kit-js-master” folder and D) the original zip file.
7. Delete items B, C, and D from step 6.
8. Download and install a code/text editor. I personally prefer Sublime Text 2, but a lot of folks prefer Notepad++ as well.
   1. A dedicated code/text editor is highly preferable here, as much of the code for the Alexa skills in JS – Node.JS in particular, I believe.
9. After you’ve muddled your way through this folder architecture, go into the README file and not the order of Skills. Number the skill folders accordingly in the umbrella directory, excluding helloWorld. (You should have skills 1-9, starting with spaceGeek and ending with ChemistryFlashCards.)

Alright, that’s it for now! Next, we’ll look at setting up access to Amazon Developer and Amazon Web Services.

Zach