Alexa.NET Polly Support
Alexa.NET.APL v.15
A dash of Riker Ipsum for good measure

Everything below this line is a small reflection on how I got here – you don’t have to read it.

I was looking at my GitHub and NuGet profiles this morning and as of the recent APL support and reminders API, I have 17 NuGet packages for Alexa.NET – not including the contributions I make to the main library as and when necessary.

Last June I just thought maybe I could add some tests to the cool library started by Tim Heuer, after my sister got me looking at her new “Alexa”. Tim’s patience as I got my head around open source, of course the process but more importantly the considerations around breaking changes, consistency and ease of use for what we were releasing meant I was encouraged when my first couple of change PRs were eventually merged in.

Local tech community encouragement to get involved as I developed a passion for it combined with the great documentation, samples and improvements from the Alexa team meant I felt comfortable talking about what I’d learnt and started writing code outside of the main library for optional components.

Forward to today. Using Alexa to show the potential of our platform at work has me involved in regular conversation around voice first and played a big part in my winning our most prestigious award here at Experian; the result of which is that I’m flying out to Japan next week!

As if that wasn’t enough I get to attend Re:Invent this year and take in as much as possible from the people and teams who work in this incredibly innovative space, and have made this last year such a fun time for me to be a developer.

I’m not writing skills, but I am writing code, and it makes me happy.