AiC Episode 133

In this episode, Teri welcomes Nick Sawka, an independent Alexa skills developer and the developer behind Historical Voices.

Welcome, Nick!

Nick is a 19 year veteran of the U.S coast guard who started skills development back in 2017, and a graduate from the University of Phoenix with a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Management and Operations. He’s an independent developer who also develops for Voice Skills Inc., a company based in San Antonio.

Getting Into Voice

  • Nick began as an Amazon Prime member dating back from 2005 and when Alexa first came up he ended up calling them and he received an invitation link. He went ahead and bought it and that was his first step into what he believes is the future.
  • He always had an interest and urge to explore coding and computer programming despite having a degree in business management.
  • During Nick’s military career he would build databases and in time, he began to look up skills that used session management. Finally, he decided to take the leap to create Alexa skills for people to enjoy.

More About Nick’s Skills and his Personal Development

  • Nick first began by creating fact-based skills.
  • He believes a good voice experience is probably a 70/30 split where visual components complement the skill and make it more desirable.

About Historical Voices

  • The idea behind Historical Voices was to bring the actual voices of people who said profound important things in the past.
  • The skill was created using open source content and platforms to get famous speeches such as Martin Luther King Jr.’s, “I Have A Dream”.
  • Nick feels it’s important to maintain the authentic voice of the speaker and capture what they actually sounded like during those impactful moments in history.
  • Historical Voices has a request feature that helps in deciding which historical figure gets featured on the skill or gets added onto the database based on if the historical figure meets the required criteria.
  • Currently, the Historical Voices database contains 47 different individuals and 6 different historical events.

How it Works

  • Nick wanted to incorporate a gamification aspect into the skill whereby if a user used it many times, they would unlock more people in four stages, and if they used it more than 100 times, they would unlock everything.
  • The skill keeps track of a user’s sessions and contains reminders that give them the ability to check out if their addition was added onto the database.
  • Whenever you start the skill on a non-screen device it throws you a card with a printout of everyone that’s on the skill and that allows you to scroll through and select who you want to listen to.

Plans For The Future

  • Nick plans to expand the database with as many inspirational people as possible in order to meet users’ needs and keep them engaged and entertained.
  • He also hopes to make the skill into an education and reference point for people to benefit from.

List of resources mentioned in this episode:

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