For my dad’s birthday, I was wondering what I should give him. I briefly considered buying him a store-bought present, but I didn’t know what I should get. There wasn’t anything that seemed good enough. Then, I thought of the best thing he had done for me this year. My mind immediately went to one thing: Alexa. This year, he had started teaching me coding and developing Alexa skills, and that was one of the greatest things I had learned in the past year.

At first, I thought of making a fact skill, but then I decided to make something more difficult, to show Daddy his teaching had paid off. I decided to make a skill, which, when launched, will play an mp3 file of my family singing happy birthday to him. It wasn’t tough to make so after an hour of work it was complete! On the morning of my dad’s birthday, I asked Alexa to ‘open Daddy’s present’. Both of us were so happy, I will never forget that moment. I could see he was proud of me and I think that was the best gift I ever gave my dad.

If you would like to give a personalized skill to your loved ones, here is the code for my skill. If you would like to learn how to create a similar Alexa skill, check out this post.