Beyond the Screen: Big Nerd Ranch and Amazon Create No-Cost Training Courses for Building Voice Experiences for Services and Devices

ATLANTA, Feb. 19, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Big Nerd Ranch, known globally for its highly effective immersive application development bootcamps and app development services, is working with Amazon to develop training courses for the Alexa Skills Kit. The Alexa Skills Kit is a collection of APIs and tools that allow developers to create new voice-driven capabilities for Alexa, the brain behind the Amazon Echo and Alexa-enabled devices.

Alexa Skills provide customers with new ways to engage with services and devices through voice-driven interaction. With Alexa Skills and this shift toward zero UI, the possibilities are endless and can span multiple verticals including healthcare, entertainment, education, telecommunications, retail and travel. Through this training—available to developers worldwide starting later this month, and continuing to roll out over the next few months—developers will learn how to enable devices to complete time-saving voice-driven commands such as making dinner reservations or setting an alarm.

In this no-cost training, students will learn to build Alexa Skills from start to finish, beginning with development environment setup, and concluding with Amazon certification and more complex skill interactions like account linking. Best practices for voice user interfaces will also be taught, along with UI design, database interaction, testing and more.

"Smart home innovation and the Internet of Things are at the forefront of emerging technology," said Aaron Hillegass, CEO and founder of Big Nerd Ranch. "Big Nerd Ranch has been on the cusp of cutting-edge technologies for fifteen years, and we're delighted to work with Amazon to give brands and developers the education and tools necessary to better serve their users."

"Through the Alexa Skills Kit, developers have access to a collection of self-service APIs, tools and code samples that make it fast and easy to add skills to Alexa-enabled devices," said Rob Pulciani, Director, Alexa. "Today we're thrilled to make it even easier for developers to build Alexa Skills by working with Big Nerd Ranch, the leader in developer training courses. Big Nerd Ranch Alexa courses will get developers up to speed on Voice User Interface design, and how to quickly create natural language experiences for Alexa. The courses are intuitive, fun and educational—and all at no cost to the developer."

About Big Nerd Ranch
Established in 2001, Big Nerd Ranch specializes in client app development and expert instruction from the brightest developers and designers in the industry. Known for its immersive programming courses and training based on its best-selling series of books, Big Nerd Ranch hosts retreat-style bootcamps in Atlanta and on the Central Coast of California. Corporate courses are also held at client sites globally. With instructors who are full-time developers and designers, honing their skills on projects every day, Big Nerd Ranch courses and bootcamps offer an unprecedented level of expertise in a variety of programming instruction on iOS, Android, frontend and backend web, mobile design and Mac and Cocoa apps.

SOURCE Big Nerd Ranch

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