Coding Dojo and Amazon Collaborate to Train Alexa Developers

BELLEVUE, WA--(Marketwired - Nov 15, 2016) - Coding Dojo, a pioneer in the coding bootcamp space, today announced the addition of a new in-person class, video series and hackathon that will train developers to create new capabilities called "skills" for Alexa, the voice service that powers Amazon Echo. The Alexa team collaborated with Coding Dojo to launch all of these instructional tools and events that help aspiring and established coders learn about Alexa skill development. These skills enable Alexa to perform tasks like controlling smart-home devices, giving users recipes or sharing a variety of information about different topics with simple voice commands.

"Alexa gets smarter every day through the skills built by talented developers like the ones trained by Coding Dojo," said Rob Pulciani, director of Amazon Alexa. "We are pleased to work with Coding Dojo to train the developer community to create high-quality, creative and unique skills for Alexa."

"At Coding Dojo we want to give people hands-on experience building apps and programs for popular technologies in order to help them further their careers," said Richard Wang, CEO at Coding Dojo. "The new class, videos and hackathons will give both novice and existing developers invaluable project experience for their resumes and portfolios. With a number of our graduates already working at Amazon, we're hopeful that these types of real world projects will help more of our students get the opportunity to work on exciting new technology like Alexa."

The Alexa skill building class is available as a module in the Python stack at Coding Dojo's 14-week onsite coding bootcamp. The first in a series of Alexa-focused Coding Dojo YouTube videos, "How to Build Your First Alexa Skill with Python," is free and for novice or established developers looking to refine their skill set. Both the class and video will be publicly available by the end of 2016. Finally, Coding Dojo will host an Alexa skills hackathon led by Amazon Alexa employees on Feb. 20, 2017 in San Jose, Calif. It will be open to the public; anyone interested in participating should contact Coding Dojo's San Jose campus.

Coding Dojo hosted Alexa workshops in San Jose, Calif. in Aug. 2016 and Bellevue, Wash. in Sept. 2016. The success of those events led to them to collaborate for the new training module, videos and upcoming hackathon.

To apply for Coding Dojo's bootcamp go here.

About Coding Dojo
Coding Dojo is one of the highest rated coding bootcamps in the industry, and the only coding bootcamp in the world to teach three full technology stacks in a single 14-week program. Since 2012, Coding Dojo has helped individuals from a variety of backgrounds and skill levels transform into professional developers who go on to be hired by start-ups and world-class companies like Amazon, Expedia, Microsoft, JPMorgan Chase, DocuSign and Skytap. Coding Dojo has campuses in Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, Seattle, Silicon Valley and Washington D.C. The company is one of the fastest growing startups with recognition in rankings like the GeekWire 200. Go to www.codingdojo.com to learn more.