My story of becoming an Amazon Alexa Student Influencer- The twists and turns…
People rightly say “Opportunities don’t happen, you create them..”.
This is neither the beginning nor will be the end. This is definitely not the ultimate achievement of my life, but I’ll always cherish this.
Here I am, my name is Supriyo Chowdhury. I am a Computer Science Engineering 3rd year undergrad student in Aditya College Of Engineering And Technology, hunting for opportunities to be successful in life. I got selected as Amazon Alexa Student Influencer 3.0, for the year 2020–2021, which is one of my biggest achievements till date.
I have received loads of DMs on my LinkedIn and Facebook channels, asking about how I got selected for this Influencer Program. Hence I decided to share my journey and experiences through a blog.
Voice always played an important role in my life, still is. And I believe it’s the next disruption in technology. It’s high time to make ourselves involved in the development of voice.
Isn’t it cool to be able to control everything using just your voice? Wouldn’t it be lovely if your phone, electrical appliances, your doors and windows, all obeyed the command just uttered from your mouth? Yes! In today’s world your wishes are made possible using The Voice. NLP (Natural Language Processing) is an essential key to this, and companies like Amazon have made it easier for us to develop cool stuff from scratch itself. And this really kindled me to know more about Voice.
I’m extremely elated to share my journey of becoming Amazon Alexa Student Influencer. Without further due, allow me to guide you through my version of a rollercoaster ride :)
The Inception
Everything started long back during my 1st year, when I started learning Python. The first project that I created after learning python was a virtual assistant named Marky, which I definitely constructed by taking help from the internet. And it was robust, interactive, working great and I was really happy. I wanted to develop more of them, and eventually I met the Head of Technical Hub of our campus, (the epicenter of all technological activities in our college) Mr. Babji Neelam, and I asked him how I could learn about these virtual assistants. He introduced me to chatbot development and that’s when I met Jagdeep Sir, who is a certified chatbot developer. Back then I had no idea about chatbots and how they work. I started learning about them and this is where everything started pumping up.
Jagdeep sir guided me with all sorts of ways, and I started learning chatbot development with IBM Watson and Node-Red. It was really an alluring experience. After a month or so, Jagdeep Sir asked me to learn about Alexa Skill Development. I went through the documentation available and developed a quiz skill, which was named as ‘chatbot facts’, where people can ask questions related to chatbots.
I was in my 2nd year when I came to know about freelancing, and in the meantime, I continued pushing through developing chatbots in IBM Watson, Chatfuel, ManyChat, DialogFlow, SAPsonversational.ai, how to use APIs (Application Program Interfaces) and many more stuffs.
I got my first order on fiverr, and it was an Amazon Lex recommendation chatbot. I didn’t have any idea how to develop that, but I decided to take the risk. Ultimately after 1 week, I came with a printer recommendation chatbot in Amazon Lex. Well hardwork always pays off, thus I got my first income. I started developing chatbots on different platforms, and I ended up earning a decent amount of money, enough to pay my college fees for a year.
I was not very much into Alexa Skill Development during that phase of my life, because I was focusing more on general chatbot development, basically my freelancing projects.
I still remember Babji Sir telling me about the Amazon Alexa Student Influencer Program in November of 2019 and he told me that I want you to become the first Alexa Influencer from our college, and those words were enough for me to get started. I registered myself that day only. And things started to fall in line from then.
The Amazon Alexa Student Influencer Program is a campus connect program which selects some young campus ambassadors and leaders willing to learn about Voice and AI. It’s basically a bridge between the Amazon Alexa Team and Campus Students. Being an Amazon Alexa Student Influencer you get the opportunity to participate in so many exciting activities. You get exclusive goodies, a chance to evangelize, share the same community with like-minded people, get to interact with the topmost Alexa Developers, external speakership, internship opportunities and lots of fun. And then I was really looking forward to get selected.
The basic procedure is to test one’s ability to come up with two skills with their innovative ideas and manage to break the ice in the interview. In the meantime, I had already developed some skills for my college but not from my account. Hence I was left with only two skills in my amazon developers account, the first one being ‘chatbot facts’ and the other ‘football facts’. Not really very innovative though. Nevertheless, I applied with these two skills ID, filled the form for the Alexa Student Influencer Program. And believe me, what I felt then was a mixture of stray confidence and self-doubt.
Getting Selected for the Interview
I waited for a long time anticipating a call from them regarding my application, but I didn’t get one. When I almost lost hope, one fine evening on my way to my hostel I got a sudden call from Amazon. I was selected in the first round and was called for an interview. And that very evening I gave an Interview standing on the road-side(yes, very literally). Part of our weird little lives makes us do the most peculiar things and this was one of them. The first interview was an HR round, which was somewhat easy to crack based on one’s communication and leadership skills. He asked me about the number of events I conducted and my experiences about them, my plans after becoming an Amazon Alexa Student Influencer, and some similar questions. He also asked me a bit of technical ones too, like what is AWS, what I learned from Alexa Skills etc. The interview lasted for around 45 mins and I was really confident for the next call. The mixed sensations of anxiety and giddiness kicked in as well.
I got another call in the afternoon after 2 months of my first interview, in the middle of the lockdown, stranded in our homes. I was jubilant to know that my application was processed to the final round of the interview. It was a technical round. I was asked with some technical questions entirely on Alexa Development, and some on Python programming. It also went on for 20 mins or so. Although my experiences with the questions were pretty smooth, but I failed to answer one of them. So, I prepped my mind for a rejection and went back to start my preparation to apply for next year.
Hold your horses folks. I guess I wasn’t that bad either.
The Sweet Success
After a long wait, the great news came my way. On 5th June at 4pm in the evening, my heart skipped a beat when I got an email from the Alexa team, and I was selected. It was so ecstatic, I was dancing with boundless happiness and my dream turned into a reality.
The Orientation Experience
Every year Amazon Alexa Team conducts the orientation of the ASIs in the Bangalore office. But we were really unlucky. The orientation was held online, because of the pandemic.
It was 11th July of 2020, we all the ASIs got a chance to meet each other in a video conference of almost 5 hours. It was so great to meet all my fellow colleagues, and to know their journeys and their visions. The orientation was held by Karthik Sir, and it was so much fun. I was trying to maintain a professional attire in the orientation, but everything suddenly turned out like a family.
We got a chance to interact with the Alexa Heads of the country, namely Dilip Sir, Dheeraj Sir, Ramakrishnan Sir and Sohan Sir. They showered their insights and their experiences on us. It was really amazing to know how Amazon works, their workflows, their plans for the future and so many things.
We also played a Taboo word game at the end of the orientation and almost ended up winning it.
We were really missing the scrumptious pizzas and the coffee of the office, as described by Karthik Sir.
And I realized if the online session was so fun, then how much fun and interactive would’ve been if the session was taken in the office.
Those were the best 5 hours of my life. And also I’ll be always waiting for this type of conference.
And now I am diligently working as an Amazon Alexa Student Influencer for my campus.
This was my journey of becoming an Amazon Alexa Student Influencer, and really looking forward to contribute in the augmentation of Voice in the country.😊😊
Hence tech-enthusiasts, what are you waiting for?
Go grab your opportunities, learn Alexa Skill Development. Get your hands on voice and develop some cool stuffs. Alexa Student Influencer 4.0 program is on its way. All the best!
