VT Hacks V
VT Hacks V (2018) was a food-filled, exciting, and unifying event.
My team, Bartender, decided to create an Alexa skill to give directions on how to make certain drinks. We did so using the Alexa skill dashboard, AWS Lambda, and AWS Cloud 9. A lot of expectations of the team were realized during this event, but more important were the ideas and passion that spurred from working closely together.
The Team
First let me describe the team a little. Galina, Saad, Erin, and I all live in the Honors Residential College (HRC) at Virginia Tech and all of us have an interest in software. We made a plan to come to this hackathon together about a month before, a month of excitement and setting up a group chat for the event, but no brainstorming for what to work on. During that month, a lot of expectations for the hackathon were born: lots of food, very smart people, maybe some swag, much support from sponsors, and an enormous opportunity to learn.
We agreed that learning something new was the most important thing for our idea—and so we focused our attention into making an Alexa skill. This skill would help the user make a mixed drink by providing ingredients and instructions. The reader might think that this is a feature already available on Alexa, but there is a small difference in the way we wanted to create it. Currently, asking Alexa how to make a drink would lead to a list of ingredients read to you, and then an option to send instructions to your phone. We wanted to have Alexa read out the instructions as well, so that the user does not have to pull out their phone at all.
The Project
We began hacking. From a quick online exploration, we determined there were two main components to creating an Alexa skill: configuring the skill to parse out the important words and recognize actions, and a function that takes the actions and important words to create a string output of what Alexa should respond with.
We split up the team into two main tasks: figuring out how to get the instructions for the drinks into a string that could be read by Alexa (this included API calls to a mixed drink database), and learning how to connect the skill to the Lambda function. Throughout the development of each task, we were able to keep a coherent codebase because we used AWS Cloud 9. An intuitive way to describe it is a Google Docs-like IDE. We could edit the same code on different computers real-time, have a shared shell so we could see one another’s commands, and pair program at a level none of us have experienced before. After each task was done, we put the two together to finish the skill, and after some testing and troubleshooting, the minimum viable product was ready.
Takeaways
The team learned many new skills, but I’m sure that the most important takeaway was the inspiration to continue working on this project. Additionally, we enjoyed the environment that VT hacks provided tremendously. The food, the focus on creation, the support from sponsors, and the support from volunteers all contributed to making an environment where learning could flourish in such a small timeframe. To continue working on this project and to re-create a fraction of the environment we loved so much, we decided to meet up on Sundays and start a laid-back coding club. The purpose is for people to create together, mingle, and learn from one another.
This hackathon is an experience I will cherish for a long time. Thought it ended, the team knows it was simply a start of something bigger, and from a more personal perspective, the club taking off could contribute to leaving a nice little legacy at the HRC.