At yesterday's Voice Summit, Amazon announced the winners in their Alexa Skills Challenge: Aging and Engaging. The goal of the challenge was to create an innovative voice-driven app for the 55 and older population.
Let's Connect: Best in Class!
Out of nearly 800 participants and 85 skills, our Storyteller Cafe experience was awarded Best in Category for the "Let's Connect" category! Our voice app was selected by a panel of judges from the AgeTech and Voice industries.
It is such an honor and thrill to have our work recognized by the judges. We worked very hard to completely rebuild our voice experience using Python and move it to the Alexa-Hosted platform. We also made several significant improvements and we have more updates on the roadmap.
Our Submission Video
For a look at what the judges saw, here's a link to our official submission video. My sincere thanks go to our entire team for all their efforts in making this happen! We look forward to bringing our engaging virtual friends to more people who can benefit from their fun conversations.
Connecting with Virtual Friends
It feels important and significant that Storyteller Cafe won the "Let's Connect" category. The four categories were:
Stay Sharp
Keep Moving
Be Supported
Let's Connect
While we entered our voice app into both the "Stay Sharp" and "Let's Connect" categories, we were delighted to come out on top in the latter category. Why? Because our four cafe characters Alex, Maddison, Lilly, and Collin are all about making an isolated person feel connected.
These virtual friends aren't real people, but their dialogue is scripted by real human beings who take great care in crafting fun interactions. It feels great to know that the true purpose of these virtual characters shines through!