March 11 - March 13, 2016
370 King St W. Suite 300, Toronto, Ontario, M5V 1J9

Connected Lab to host Amazon Echo’s first ever hackathon in Canada

The challenge? Bring ‘Alexa’, the virtual personal assistant, to life.

Remember the 2013 film Her? The Oscar-winning science fiction rom-com featuring an intelligent computer operating system voiced by Scarlett Johansson? This March, as part of Amazon Echo’s first ever Canadian hackathon, co-hosted by Toronto’s own Connected Lab, that idea will be one step closer to reality as Canada’s best tech minds spend a weekend hacking the virtual personal assistant.

Their subject will be “Alexa”, the voice-based operating system behind Amazon’s latest consumer electronic device, the Amazon Echo. The Echo is a small cylindrical speaker that can perform an impressive list of tasks. Users can ask Alexa to play music, read news headlines, make to-do lists, order products from Amazon.com, or even dim the lights in a room. Not yet available in Canada, the hackathon will provide designers and developers the first opportunity to explore the Amazon Echo. Their challenge? “Hack” the Echo to develop new capabilities, called “Skills”, for Alexa to perform.