A day at Amazon

How does a dream come true?

Maybe I could share my experience here as just few days back I lived a dream as did many of my companions. I hope I could write it up as real as it was.

Backdrop:

Being an Alexa Developer since few months now, I came across this program run by Amazon Alexa that is the Alexa Student Influencer on the Slack Channel of the Alexa Devs in India. So I contacted a superior person there and was asked to mail my query to the marketing guy of Alexa Skills in India.

Dropped my query to him. But sadly didn’t get a reply anytime soon.

Then one day, another senior engineer congratulated few devs who were selected to be ASI’s. I congratulated all of them and was happy to see them there as they worked since the beginning.

But somewhere down my heart, I felt bad and disappointed and said to myself,

why not me?

This gave me the Josh I needed to apply and contact the program manager again. So yeah, I wrote all my experience this time and even went on to attach my resume.

Voila!

Got the response same day and was set up for an interview next day.

The interview call went on for around 10 minutes. I was asked questions regarding my experience, why did I want this position, how will I go about this program and few more.

A big decision came around when he asked if I was part of any other communities. I already being the Lead of Developer Student Club on my campus, was asked whether I could manage both responsibilities.

I couldn’t make the decision in that moment, so I requested for few days to decide. Afterwards I consulted my faculties and few seniors of mine whether to take up the responsibility and everyone was very supportive. In that process I remember my senior saying ,

Not all opportunities can be grabbed

Sighting this I was almost on the verge of not taking up this position but then I felt like lets take it. Who knows what comes out of it, would anyway be better than regretting afterwards.

So just keeping this thought in my mind, I dialled him up and said I was ready.

Finally I just had an informal confirmation interview call and was accepted into the program.

Calling in for the decision, the guy told me ,

Congratulations. You are selected.

Also next week we are hosting a workshop in Bangalore and I suggest you attend it.

(on verge of asking for travel tickets)

We shall arrange for your tickets to Bangalore.

I was on cloud infinity then.

After that I went home and told this to my parents. They congratulated me as well.

And then the word went around in my family, college and friends circle too. Everyone supported and congratulated me for this feat.

So, all the tickets were booked and I was ready to fly to Bangalore.

As the crew announced we are ready for take-off, I got emotional and tears almost came out as it was a moment of joy as well as achievement as I was firstly travelling on sponsored tickets and also towards a dream. Mainly it was the decision to take the role that might define my future that made my heart heavy then.

All right then. Reached Bangalore after a long journey, courtesy layover of 4 hours!

Waited for the other influencers to arrive and reached hotel by midnight!

The big day is here!

So everyone had their breakfasts and we were waiting in the lounge for our taxi. Everything went fast and we reached the office.

Amazon Office, World Trade Centre, Bangalore

We entered the world trade centre and we were supposed to get our visitor passes.

Formalities done and we type in “28” in the dialpad for the elevator.

Everyone was so excited that our program manager almost stepped out on an another floor :p

Finally we enter the office and in front is the big A->Z smile Amazon logo. That pumped us a lot. One brand I trust a lot and I am standing inside it’s office, woah! What more could have I asked for?

Also standing was Tom George, Marketing Officer – Alexa Skills in India ( who interviewed me ). Everyone shook hands and went in to the meeting room.

Present inside was Karthik Raghubathy, Solutions Architect of Alexa Skills Kit and Sohan Maheshwar, an Alexa Evangelist who was one of the judges of the hackathon we stood second in.

Again shook hands !

Taking our seat , to our sight were placed some very cool ” Schwags “.

The biggest moment was about to happen and it did!

Dilip R.S. ( Alexa India Head ) just entered in to the room and had an interaction with us. I couldn’t believe it for a second. Literally an honour it was ..

img-20190316-wa0015 — Alexa India Head !

We then introduced ourselves and I realised everyone was way more talented than me!

That said, the session began and were taken through the process and details about how to go through conducting sessions on our own.

The one thing which impressed me the most was the presentation itself :xD

img-20190316-wa0064 — Karthik Sir in Action!

After that we had a technical session on Alexa Skills Development which was pretty basic and everyone already had a feel of it beforehand.

On the sidelines were piled up boxes of Pizza! Already had lost my focus which caught the eye of the speakers as well .

And we broke for lunch. A exciting activity was taking place alongside with lunch. Over here we had to say 3 things or statements about ourself of which 1 had to be incorrect and the others have to guess which one is incorrect.

This saw some great statements like ” I am a karate Black Belt ” ,

I never published an Alexa Skill – By Karthik Raghubathy, Solutions Architect, ASK

And I was the only to screw up. Thought the game was about putting as many false statements about oneself.

Anyway, we were back to our seats and went through the motion for some more technical aspects and features of Alexa Skill Development like Reminders API, Account Linking and much more.

And with all that we had refreshment break and one more session and we were done with the technical aspects.

img-20190316-wa00542 — Here is Sohan Sir !

Tom Sir then took it forward going on give us an overview of our roles and tasks to be performed through out the year.

img-20190316-wa0055 — ” I am a black belt ” By Tom George

Exciting session ahead.

We had an activity on our platter.

Interact with the guy you have talked least to while you have gathered in Bangalore.

This gave me a chance to talk to Ashish and we talked about our tax deducted money on our hackathon prize money!

At the end we were supposed to think a gift which we would give to the counterpart.

Ashish chose Echo spot for me and I thought of tax deducted money to be returned back :xD

But then Siddharth just came out of no where and said ” FISH ” .

Of course he took it away with the fish lol but it was a competetion between our gifts .

Next Activity Please

Team A and Team B were formed. Team-B we were!

First game was TABOO where one had to describe a given word without using the listed words.

Team – A got a very damn word which no one of us had a clue about — ARSON

The guy described it as “Beta” (Son), who was prompted to use sentence.

He is Papa ka Beta

And the room erupted with laughter :p :p

No one could guess it and then after few turns Team- A was leading.

I got the word Burglary and I could use Thief fortunately 🙂

What does a thief do ?

It’s like a burger LOL

Yeah scores were tied!

And in the end we took the game.

Next game was Pictionary where you have to draw relating to the word given and guess.

Here were some crazy words like Black Hole, Bee, Pubg (my word) and what not.

Even that resulted in a tie which brought the tie-breaker in the frame.

Now the task was to sell a used tissue paper to the Marketing officer .

Team-A took their turn and the guy was impressed a bit.

Just as they were taking the turn, I got an idea.

Throwback to the Lunch, many had trouble opening the Beverage where it started to fizzle and my mate beside had spilled few drops on his Mac too! So I took a tissue and saved it!

And that was it. We went in with this idea and took a bottle of water and dropped few drops on the shoes of the guy (which he didn’t allow anyway ) and then we told them use this tissue to wipe it off!

Bang on! Won it easily !