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Announcing the Twilio Hackathon on DEV

Jess Lee on April 02, 2020

We are very excited to announce the first Twilio x DEV community hackathon! Running through April 30, this contest will be an opportunity to earn ...
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Dominik Kundel

Hi DEV community πŸ‘‹

My name is Dominik and I'm part of the team here at Twilio. If you have any questions around Twilio or the hackathon let me know. We love this community and the creativity you all bring. We are super excited to see all the amazing things you'll build and are here to help you all πŸ’–

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imgntn

It's not right to allow commercialization and selling of people's submissions in your license. You have to stop this. Please remove this language from your rules. Exploiting entries for profit is a bad look in any case, but especially given current circumstances.

  1. LICENSE. You grant to Twilio and their affiliates a non-exclusive, worldwide, perpetual, fully paid up, royalty-free, sublicensable, transferable license to (1) hyperlink to your website and software from Twilio’s websites, or websites from Twilio’s agents, affiliates, or assigns; (2) use and display your name, professional and personal information, photo, likeness, and your trademarks related to your software for any purpose related to this Competition ; (3) copy, distribute, sell, compile, revise, commercialize and otherwise use any Submission transmitted to Twilio, linked to, or listed on any registration form.
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Dominik Kundel

Twilio has no intention to sell or commercialize your submissions. We updated our terms for the hackathon and dropped the sell and commercialize from (3). You can find the updated terms here: twilio.com/legal/twilio-dev-hackat...

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Thomas Bnt
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Dominik Kundel

Sorry for that glitch. It's back :)

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jess profile image
Jess Lee

Should be working now!!

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Dominik Kundel

Thanks for raising your concern, @imgntn ! Twilio definitely has no intention to sell or commercialize your submissions. We will work with our legal counsel to revise the terms.

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imgntn profile image
imgntn

Thank you - I know a lot of this is boilerplate but I think you'll get more/better entries if people are comfortable that their work won't be commercialized or sold. Best.

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dkundel profile image
Dominik Kundel

Totally get it. We updated our terms for the hackathon and dropped the sell and commercialize from (3). You can find the updated terms here: twilio.com/legal/twilio-dev-hackat...

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technoplato profile image
Michael Lustig - halfjew22@gmail.com

Way to respond quickly and kindly to helpful feedback! I love the mindset of almost everyone I've run across on this site, and appreciate you following suit despite the corporate presence! πŸ™

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Bernard Baker • Edited

Try to understand that without the funding from a corporation of some kind neither this Hackathon nor the internet, or IETF would exist.

If I don't have an alphanumeric to stand on please enlighten me. Happy to discuss this you.

Take a look at this en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_S... it might help you understand more about how things got started.

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technoplato profile image
Michael Lustig - halfjew22@gmail.com

Hey Bernard, was this a response to me?

If so, I wasn’t bashing all corporations. I understand their helpfulness, certainly.

However, my personal belief is that the idea that this mindset you’ve described is needed for continued growth is aging quickly. I’m working on developing new economic ideas behind user centric DAOs, for lack of a better term. That’s all I’ll say on that point.

To clarify my comment: again I understand the usefulness of corporations. However, it’s getting more and more obvious in techland where corporations interests and biases and influences lay. As a member of tech land, I find this obnoxious if not outright abusive (of monopoly, for example).

The above concession with the removal of the abuse of power is refreshing.

Does that help clarify my point?

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Bernard Baker

Yes it was. More information about your economic ideas please.

Please explain the interests, biases and influence.

When you say "above concession", are you referring to the legal clause?

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Bernard Baker • Edited

Wow. I think you have a complicated task on your hands. But I'll leave you with these questions? How will you fund it? Keep the lights on?

I have to get back to work now. Bye!

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Bernard Baker

I think you should pursue this idea.

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Rohit Prasad

Dominik Kundel I'd like to submit my projects with a copy-left license (preferably GNU GPLv3) this ensures that my projects or any of it's forks never get Closed-source.
Telling candidates to stick only with a Permissive Licenses is the same as rule (3), these licenses already make the project available to copy, distribute, sell, compile, revise and commercialize by any other person in the world.

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dkundel profile image
Dominik Kundel

Hi Rohit,

I absolutely understand your concern. Our goal with Twilio CodeExchange is to enable as many developers with code as possible and allow the community to showcase their projects. Ultimately it is your call under what license you license your code but since this hackathon is celebrating the opening of community submissions for CodeExchange, we decided to limit it to permissive licenses only since that is the limitation for CodeExchange and every entry might be added there.
Again Twilio does not have any intention in selling your work and I know it's not necessarily blocking others from a licensing perspective. Ultimately it's your call what license you put your work under.
We'll make sure to revisit the policy for the next hackathon we run.

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Simba Mupfukudzwa

Thank you so much for pointing this out.
Have a blessed day.

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Michael "lampe" Lazarski

Hey Dominik :)

Yes, 2 questions:

  • Where is the best place to start to get an overview of all your API capabilities?
  • Where can I enter the promo code 🀣 Just created a new account and I can not find it.
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Dominik Kundel

Hi Michael!

You can find a top-level overview of all of our products at twilio.com/products. Since Twilio has so many different APIs by now, it's the best place to get started to get a birdseye view. After that I'd suggest for you to go to twilio.com/docs and check out the docs for your respective product to see the options of what you can do with the API. I hope that helps

You can enter the promo code when you upgrade your account. You'll have to add a credit card or PayPal but as long as you don't check the "Auto Top-Up" checkbox, we won't charge you if you use a promo code. You can find more detailed instructions at twil.io/apply-promo.

Happy hacking and we can't wait to see what you build!

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Michael "lampe" Lazarski

Thank you very much :)

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Waleed

Hi Dominik,

What are the expectations for the project? Does it have to be complex and fully polished or can it just be an idea with simply implemented? (I say this because I'm a relatively new developer)

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Dominik Kundel

Hi Waleed!

You should definitely give it a try and do as much as you can :) While we will look at the implementation in terms of judging, you'd still qualify for at least the participation reward :) If you want to explore some of the Twilio APIs first, you can check out TwilioQuest as well

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Benjamin Ashbaugh

Hello,

Are teams eligible? If not, would it be possible to choose one person to enter our project and collect prizes for us?

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Dominik Kundel

Yes you can work in teams but there will be only one prize per team not per member. So yes you can code together but one person should submit it. Feel free to mention that you worked with multiple people on it though so we can celebrate you all!

twil.io/terms-dev-hackathon

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Marko Shiva

Thanks to you and guys at twilio for organising the hackaton.

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katheesh profile image
ΠΊΞ±Ρ‚Π½Ρ”Ρ”Ρ•ΠΊΟ…ΠΌΞ±ΙΎ

Hello Dominik, have a nice day.

What is the URL for submit my project?

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Dominik Kundel

Hey :) you submit here on dev.to. If you check the original announcement post you'll see a link to a post template where you can describe your submission. Also make sure that you additionally fill out the form here: ahoy.twilio.com/code-exchange-comm....
You'll have to do both to be eligible.

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katheesh profile image
ΠΊΞ±Ρ‚Π½Ρ”Ρ”Ρ•ΠΊΟ…ΠΌΞ±ΙΎ

Thank you Dominik Kundel

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Lucas Queiroz

Hey Dominik! Am I allowed to create more than 1 project?
Thanks

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Dominik Kundel

Yes you can create more than one project but you'll only be eligible to winning one prize. Happy hacking!

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Rishabh Gupta

Hey, i don't have credit card or PayPal account. So, can i just make the project with the free trial account without using the promo code ?

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Dominik Kundel

Yes you can absolutely start with a trial account :) If you hit any roadblocks please let me know.

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Bernard Baker

Hello,

Does Twilio have a cron/schedule API?

Is that new CRM solution from Twilio available to use for free? Or would I have to pay for that?

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Dominik Kundel

Hi Bernard,

We currently do not have a cron/scheduling API. Personally I use another service to trigger my webhooks to handle that.

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Bernard Baker

What service do you use?

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dkundel profile image
Dominik Kundel

I personally either use Zapier or Azure Functions

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Bernard Baker

Great 🀸 I got set up with Zapier πŸš€

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Paolo

Hi @dkundel . can you give a thought on how to verify a medical practitioner ? does this kind of security is required for the hackathon? thank you.

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Dominik Kundel

Hi Paolo! That would typically require integrating with one of the big medicine tech providers and they are often not for free. I'd focus on making sure that there's some authentication method and pointing out that if this would be used in production people should swap that out with a different authentication method that is suitable for their field.

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Paolo

thank you for the reply, so for the meaning i can just proceed and consider that the 'doctor' is verified ? for this hackathon? sorry had so many question as this hinders me from proceeding.

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Dominik Kundel

Yes I think that's a fair assumption 😊

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Bernard Baker

In the UK doctors have a GMC code. Which can verified on a website gmc-uk.org/registration-and-licens...

Every country will have one.

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Nikhil Nair

Hey Dominik, does Twilio Verify allow users to change the message template? The documentation doesn't seem to indicate so, but I wanted to confirm.

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Dominik Kundel

Hi Nikhil,

Unfortunately it's not possible to modify the message for SMS. You can modify it for Email though. You can find the docs on how to use Verify with Email here: twilio.com/docs/verify/email

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nikhilnair48 profile image
Nikhil Nair

Gotcha. Thanks for the response, Dominik.

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Carlo Brillantes

Hi Dominik! Is it okay to ask about the grand prize "$1,500 USD gift card or equivalent "?

What kind of gift card is that? Where can we use it? Thank you.

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_nthabi profile image
🐰

Hi Dominik

My friends and I are keen on entering. We are a group of 4. How do we go about submitting a team entry for the hackathon?

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Dominik Kundel

Hey :) one of you should do the submission (if you are hosting the project on GitHub on a personal account I'd recommend that person does it). In the submission post make sure to mention your team mates :)

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krishna kakade • Edited

If i didn't use api or i did something related to COVID-19 precautions related animation kind of website that is applicable in this hackathon

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Dominik Kundel

Since this is a Twilio hackathon you should use at least one Twilio API. Also your project has to be built during the duration of the hackathon

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krishna kakade

ok thank you!

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Ben Halpern

I am very excited to help anybody who's interestedβ€”more on the ideas side of things than the execution. Twilio's APIs are ripe for this kind of contest πŸ˜„

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Michael Oppong

hey quick question, Is possible to transcribe a what a user is saying in text real-time, during the phone call?, because the only thing similar which I have seen is to record they are saying and then transcribe that audio after the phone call?

Thanks for your help

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Phil Nash

You absolutely can!

You should check out our Media Streams API, it sends the audio data to a websocket server for you. Check out this post on how to live transcribe calls using Google Speech-to-Text.

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Michael Oppong

Is there a python version? because all the ones I have seen are js. All I'm looking for is to be able to get a speech input from the user and turn that into text I can analyze

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philnash profile image
Phil Nash

There is a tutorial right here on how to use Twilio Media Streams in Python. Does that help?

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Michael Oppong

thank you so much for your help, but not exactly. from this link "twilio.com/blog/2017/06/how-to-use..." I am looking for the python version of the line "event.SpeechResult.toLowerCase();" If you don't know, its alright, I appreciate the support.

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philnash profile image
Phil Nash

Oh, I see! You're using <Gather input="speech"> to get the text. Sorry, for my misunderstanding.

There's quite a bit going on in that line of your question. event comes from how you would respond to an incoming request to a Twilio Function (which is what the original blog post uses). toLowerCase() in JavaScript is lower() in Python. SpeechResult is a parameter that is sent to your application as part of the webhook request. To deal with those two bits depends on the web app framework you use in Python.

If, for example, you are using Flask. You could do something like this:

from flask import Flask, request
from twilio.twiml.voice_response import VoiceResponse

@app.route("/gather", methods=['GET', 'POST'])
def gather():
    if 'SpeechResult' in request.values:
        speech = request.values['SpeechResult'].lower()
        print("The caller said: ")
        print(speech)

    resp = VoiceResponse()
    return str(resp)

In this example, the direct translation of event.SpeechResult.toLowerCase(); is request.values['SpeechResult'].lower().

Hope that helps!

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xmikestax profile image
Michael Oppong

GAANGGGGG, THANK YOU FOR YOUR HELP BRO!
stay blessed!

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Faraz Patankar

I could use some help with the ideas. Do you have anything that you could share?

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Bernard Baker

Think of a problem you might face daily. How could Twilio solve that for you?

Now think of a problem that others might face daily. How could Twilio solve it for them? I did the latter. I thought about how people in crisis might stay in touch with others in remote areas that have limited bandwidth or technical infrastructure.

With this in mind, how might the available utilised tech be best used to solve the problem.

Take a look at my project to get a better understanding 🧐.

Hope that helps 🌏

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern

Any jumping off points, any hobbies/interests/etc. you might want it to relate to?

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Wilfredo PΓ©rez

I need some ideas, because I know some things that I could do but I don't know, I feel blocked.

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Ben Halpern

What jumps out at you as an area of interest you might want to cover and what Twilio APIs are most appealing?

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gameoverwill profile image
Wilfredo PΓ©rez

Well I want to focus on helping to get their supplies elder and in risk people, basically that.

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Bernard Baker

Did you come up with an idea?

What about using Twilio SMS to connect stores with vulnerable people. The store manager can connect with people and Samaritans to get supplies to them.

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Wilfredo PΓ©rez

That's amazing this is the idea that I'm trying to work on.

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Bernard Baker

Great 🀸

What tech stack are you planning on using? Do you have an idea or preference?

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gameoverwill profile image
Wilfredo PΓ©rez

About the tech I'm thinking to use Nodejs, and if any frontend is needed, I'll use React.

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Bernard Baker

Ok. Twilio has a node SDK 🌞.

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peter profile image
Peter Kim Frank

We're so excited to partner with Twilio to put on this community hackathon. Twilio truly provides some of the most powerful and useful APIs around, and they stepped up big time in putting forward awesome prizes.

This is a really great opportunity to build that project you've been day-dreaming about. There will be plenty of opportunity to get feedback from other participants, and you'll also be able to get help directly from the Twilio team.

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Megan Speir

Hello DEV friends πŸ‘©β€πŸ’»

I'm Megan, also from team Twilio! I'm super excited to see the imagination and fun y'all will unleash this month with any projects you create. If you have any questions throughout, myself and others on my team will be here to help answer questions about Twilio or anything else. Happy hacking!

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Michael Lustig - halfjew22@gmail.com

Thanks in advance for your help Megan! This is awesome!

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Carlo Brillantes

Hi Megan! Is it okay to ask about the grand prize "$1,500 USD gift card or equivalent "?

What kind of gift card is that? Where can we use it? Thank you.

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Dominik Kundel

Hi Carlo. The reason for this wording is that this depends on the country you are at what we can get you.

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Ranvir Singh

Does anyone want to team up for this?

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Aditya Mitra

May I?

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David Mendoza (He/Him)

I would love to

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Amit

I would love to.

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Gyandeep Singh

little late but if you still need manpower hit me up. thanks

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Craig Gehrig

I would also like to join if you still have room.

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Phil Nash

What's up everyone! πŸ‘‹

I'm Phil and I'm also part of the team at Twilio. Happy to answer questions about the hack or the APIs (or anything really πŸ˜„).

I can't wait to see what you're all going to build!

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Haroldo Vivallo

Hi Phil, I have a question related to APIs, what is the best way to filter data by the attributes, does the API allow that or just returns a list (all channels, all users, etc) that I have to manually filter?

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Dominik Kundel

The filters that the REST APIs support varies from endpoint to endpoint. The best way to figure out what filters are available is by checking the docs for your specific doc and opening the REST reference docs for it

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Phil Nash

Hi Haroldo, this depends on the API you are calling and whether it has attributes you can filter on. Do you have a particular API you are asking about?

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Haroldo Vivallo

I'm working with the proglamable chat API, and I need to filter by the channel attributes and user attributes parameters. I've read the docs but there isn't explicit information about it. So what I am doing is getting all the users and all the channels and manually filtering by the attributes (attributes that I defined previously).

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Phil Nash

Oh, ok. No, you can't filter by custom attributes on channels or users through the API itself. So what you are doing is the best thing right now.

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Peter Kim Frank

πŸ‘‹ Great to see you Phil :)

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Phil Nash

Hey Peter! πŸ‘‹

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carlobrillante2 profile image
Carlo Brillantes

Hi Phil! Is it okay to ask about the grand prize "$1,500 USD gift card or equivalent "?

What kind of gift card is that? Where can we use it? Thank you.

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Devin Rader

Hey folks! My name is Devin and I'm part of the team at Twilio. I'll be your host for our Monday office hours block in the DEV Connect group channel. Super stoked to see what folks are building!

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Darren Hill

Hi. I have an idea that's been on my mind for a while which is a live podcast directory. Sort of like YouTube but for podcasts where you can hear podcasts at the same time and get access to the latest podcasts. It's not groundbreaking but I think it would be more engaging than the traditional podcast directories already available. I will have to get back into the Web development frame of mind and understand what twilio has to offer. Thanks for the inspiration. Good luck

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Megan Speir

Darren, this sounds pretty neat. Let us know if we can help.

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dazza91 profile image
Darren Hill

Do you want the $1 idea or the $1 million idea? Lol. I've been thinking on a few problems related to telephony that I am excited to think about tackling. I will write a post shortly about the pain points πŸ˜‰. Thank you again

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James Hawkins

Hi there! Does anyone know if we're allowed to participate in teams? If so, how many? I couldn't find anything about it on this post. Thanks :D

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Jess Lee

Hey @jameshawkinss ! Yes, you can work in teams but there will be only one prize per team, not per member. One person should be tasked with submitting the project, but definitely mention who your teammates are so we can celebrate you all!

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Tamas Polgar

So here's the thing... You expect people to throw away their current projects, studying, etc. and rush to build a useful application in 28 days for the hope of maybe winning about 1/4 of the monthly salary of a junior dev. Wow, isn't that generous? What are you expecting?

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Brodan

Who said you can't work on current projects, study, and participate? 28 days is a huge window of time.

Also, hackathons aren't designed to be paying your salary. It's a time to learn new things outside of work/school, build fun tools, collab with other developers, and contribute to the OSS community. Nobody is trying to make a living off of hackathon prize money. If that's your goal then I think you're missing the point.

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Comment marked as low quality/non-constructive by the community. View Code of Conduct
Tamas Polgar

Yeah, why not, I'll finish my 9 to 5 coding job, then code some more, out of pure altruism and for nothing. Don't get me wrong, I do fun coding, that's my hobby since my preteen years. But this is pure bollocks. Spend extra time on promoting a company's products for the slight chance of a meager prize, just because they call it a hackaton? Miss me with this shit, I'm not your sucker.

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Kauress

Anyone want to team up to do this? Preferably Fullstack JavaScript

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ebereplenty profile image
NJOKU SAMSON EBERE

Hey, what do you have in mind?

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Kauress

geolocation self check in dashboard with departure,arrival and quarantine stats of individuals. Community based to check the number of ongoing,outgoing people + number in quarantine in cities/villages. The video call integration looks cooler though

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ebereplenty profile image
NJOKU SAMSON EBERE

Sounds cool. I will like to partake.

github.com/eberegit

That is my profile. Think we can work together?

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Kauress

Sure, I'll dm you

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picsoung profile image
Nicolas GreniΓ©

Awesome initiative Twilio folks! πŸ‘‹

My name is Nicolas, and I am a Developer advocate at Typeform, we are providing a tool to create beautiful surveys, and quizzes.

In the past people have connected Typeform to Twilio to send SMS, or sending emails with Sendgrid using webhooks.

Hit me up if I can help :)

We are offering 3 month free if you are building a Covid19 related project, learn more here

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Brent

Hey folks, hope everyone is doing as well as they can be. I'd love to collaborate with some folks on this! I'm the backend developer behind WYA, the events app for Snapchat (if you've hard of it). I do a lot of backend, but have frontend experience too. Would love to join a team! Feel free to reach out

brobinsonj@icloud.com

Stay safe everyone!

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gyandeeps profile image
Gyandeep Singh

Here to offer manpower if you are still thinking on working on something.

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Phil Nash • Edited

We're going to go live, soon-ish, with some office hours on Twitch. Come hang out with Dominik and myself as we chat hackathons and answer your questions. We'll be on the Twilio Twitch channel.

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bluiska profile image
bluiska

Ah man! Would love to participate but I guess I'll have to write my Bachelor's Thesis instead.... 20 more days to go! #computerscience

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jess profile image
Jess Lee

Good luck!

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Megan Speir

Best of luck, that's no small feat! What is your thesis on?

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bluiska • Edited

My thesis is on the development of an indoor map and navigation application designed for new students and visitors of the university. Its a PWA so that it is accessible to as many people as possible with real-time positioning available in the natively built app if installed. It's been fun to do and I learnt a lot, I just have to write up my research and report now. Want to finish everything so I could work on awesome stuff like this hackathon (especially having to stay mostly indoors nowadays)

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philnash profile image
Phil Nash

To be honest, that app and thesis sounds pretty awesome! Good luck with it.

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Mario

This hackathon is a great ida. I'm interested in building an app using the Twilio Video API, for families to easily communicate and be with each other virtually during this time of isolation. However, my main concern is the cost of running such an app. The Twilio video api would incur costs that I would not be able to afford. I'd like the app/service to be free to people (with time limitations). I'm not interested in making a profit from the app. Is there anything Twilio can do to assist in this regard? Thank you!

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Dominik Kundel

Hi Mario! That sounds great :) Specifically for Covid we have a new grant for non-profits. I'd start by checking that out and see if you apply for that twilio.com/covid.

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Mario

Thank you for the quick response! I'll check that out! :)

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mendoza profile image
David Mendoza (He/Him) • Edited

Hey my name is David, I do react front ends and node back ends, I also code in c++, python and java if anyone needs a team mate, send me a text trough here or send me an email at d.mendoza99@unitec.edu

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Bernard Baker

It would be a good idea to remove clause (3).

(3) copy, distribute, sell, compile, revise, commercialize and otherwise use any Submission transmitted to Twilio, linked to, or listed on any registration form.

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dkundel profile image
Dominik Kundel

Thanks for raising your concern, Bernard! Twilio definitely has no intention to sell or commercialize your submissions. We will work with our legal counsel to revise the terms.

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Dominik Kundel

We updated the terms for the hackathon and dropped the sell and commercialize language from the terms. twilio.com/legal/twilio-dev-hackat...

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Prashant Chaudhari • Edited

Hi, If anyone is looking to pair up hit me up. I am Frontend Developer from India. Mainly working with React JS. Thank you Twilio Team for arranging this. Excited 🀩

Happy Hacking :)

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Sangam Rajpara

Hey!! I'm also an react - node - javascript person. Are you still looking for someone?

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Daniel

Hey all :).

I am a front-end developer that can use Vue.js and Node.js with MongoDB and Express experience. I would love to be able to find someone to collaborate with and make something cool whilst taking this as a great learning experience! :)

If I am someone you want to team with or if I can work with you hit me up with an email @ daniel.davies.dev@gmail.com

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ibtissam brahmi

Hello everyone, I'm new on Twilio developments and have a basic question: do we have the possibility to extract Twilio programmable voices and merge them in any application out of voice or video calls ?
Thanks !

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Phil Nash

Do you mean can you take the text to speech engine from Twilio and use it in another application?

If so, then no, not exactly. The basic voices (man, woman and alice) are not available outside of the Twilio platform. The other voices that are used within Twilio voice calls are from AWS Polly and you can use them in your own application. However, for the purposes of the hackathon, AWS Polly voices are not a Twilio product and wouldn't count.

Does that help?

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ibtissam brahmi

Yes I see, thanks so much !

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Bernard Baker

If anyone needs an passwordless authentication layer. That's quick and easy to set up.

Check out did.app.

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Peter Saxton

Thanks for the mention,

I'm the founder of DID.app if anyone would like to get in touch with me you can email peter@did.app

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Mauricio Jaramillo • Edited

Hi Dominik, Phil, Megan and team

We want to participate on the hackathon (as a team) and have some questions, please:

1- We are finishing a development to aid on COVID-19 emergency in Colombia; an application developed with node.js/Express and SQLServer (DB dependant); the app is all in spanish.
/Question: is this project elegible for the prize? (we may document this on English, but we can not translate the app).

2- The app is intended to join the people finding help with those who wants to help, free of charge and without subscriptions needed. The app has 2 stages: A) front-stage: For final users who find help or wants to help; they login into the system with Cel number and then receives in WhatsApp a code as a password to complete the authentication process, (the code is sent using Twilio Api); after that the user may post requests for help (categorized) and/or may post to help (categorized too); all the matches between people is informed to the parts via Twilio WhatsApp Api. B) back-stage: For administrative users; they login in to the system on a different url, need pre-created user and password, and need to be on the right ROLE (app role); they manage categories, keep the DB info valid (post-moderated info) and on high quality and give support to final users.
/Question: is this project elegible for the prize? all of our code is open but we can not share it for free as a whole; we have no problem with people reading and using our code fragments, but not as a whole.

3- Since the app is DB dependant it can not be run in a server-less env or without a SQL-Server with their respective dbs.
/Question: How can we post or publish this kind of couple of components (code and dbs)?

4- The app will be deployed to AWS services this weekend for testing and demo purposes.
/Question: this testing env is enough for the hackathon?

Thanks in advance and regards.
Mauricio Jaramillo from Colombia

PD: nice API, nice service, waiting for alpha release.

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Corey (he/him)

What's up Mauricio. Your project sounds pretty amazing. Let me tackle each question at a time and hopefully this helps.

  1. This should be fine so long as you can document it in accordance with the hackathon rules (i.e. making sure that your README has clear setup instructions to run the project locally).

  2. If I'm understanding your question correctly, it sounds like you won't be able to share all of your project's source code. If the source code you open source fully complies with the hackathon's rules (listed here) then it will apply.

  3. Your project submission does need to be a self contained demo. So if that demo requires the use of a database, can work with a portable DB (i.e. SQLLite) or something of the equivalent, and includes scripts to deploy the database tables, stored procedures, etc, then that would be a valid submission.

  4. There are no explicit rules requiring the use of a specific test environment for the hackathon. So long as your final submission is testable (and can be verified), this should be ok.

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Mauricio Jaramillo

Hi Corey

Thanks a lot for the info, very clear for us. We will be "running".

Have a nice day.

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mauriciojaramillo profile image
Mauricio Jaramillo

Hi Corey

I just posted our project to hackathon, i hope it will be elegible.

Not so much secure, our fist post to DEV.

Best regards.

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Emily Dennis

Do you have to use DEVHACK20 because I don't want to give my debit card details away as it is insecure and I don't want any accidental charges. Also having difficulties buying a number as it asks you for an address.

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Corey (he/him)

Hey Emily - You certainly don't have to use the DEVHACK20 promo code to participate in the hackathon. It does provide a $20 credit should you need to upgrade your account, but you can additionally use PayPal to add funds to your account.

Sorry to hear that you're having difficulties buying a number. As mentioned in this support article, there are some places where Twilio is required to collect information about the end user. What are the specific issues you are running into?

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Juan Irache

Hello,

This looks very interesting. I have two questions.

  • Are gift cards valid outside the US? Are they valid for online purchases?

  • I took part in a covid-themed hackathon last week and, coincidentally, used a couple of Twilio APIs. The project was started after the 2nd of April, so it seems to me like it does qualify, but is it a problem that I presented it to a different hackathon?

Thank you

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Marouen Helali

Hi my team and I want to submit our project to the Twilio Hackathon, however, we started it late March but other than that it fulfills all the other conditions. We are using Twilio to give latest info and news to users. We actually got the Twilio $500 grant to keep the service free for the users. We are just interested in helping our users by keeping the service running for free once our credits are done. Here is our website and initative: dev.to/marwan01/covid-19-updates-v... It's all open source, community driven. We even wrote an old dev post about it: dev.to/marwan01/covid-19-updates-v... Please let me know if we are ok to submit or if there is anything we can do. :)

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Corey (he/him)

Hey Marouen - Sorry to say. As specified in the hackathon rules your project must be started and completed between April 2 and April 30.

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Suvin Nimnaka

Is it possible to work as a team? πŸ€”

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Phil Nash

It is possible to team up, but there's only one prize per team not per member. So you can code together but one person should submit it. Do mention that you worked with multiple people on it though so we can celebrate you all!

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Suvin Nimnaka

Thanks! :)

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Suvin Nimnaka

I got my buddies! 😬 Next time maybe :)

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Bruno Oliveira

Hello all,
I've left my post about my project here :

dev.to/brunooliveira/twiliohackath...

Feedback and confirmation it's a valid submission would be invaluable! :)

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jep profile image
Jim

I've never done one of these before, but am excited to give it a shot. I have a great idea too and Twilio will be perfect.

I do have one question, is it normal to discuss your idea while working on it? My first instinct is to "protect" the idea and wait for the MVP/final product to reveal what you've been working on to maintain an advantage, but is that maybe the wrong perspective to have in an event like a hackathon?

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SavagePixie

I suppose we can use any language we want for this? I mean, we don't have to use one of the libraries they offer for Node, PHP, Java and so on. We can simply issue http requests in the language of our choice, can't we?

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Sajal Shrestha

Good luck to all the developers πŸ™‹πŸ»β€β™‚οΈ who are participating. I wish I could participate but I think I need more experience in the development world. Hopefully, I will be participating in these events soon. Again good luck and build awesome stuff. Love from Kathmandu, Nepal.

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Bernard Baker

Is anyone excited as I am about May 4th?

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Dominik Kundel

Unfortunately we are still in the process of judging and verification and will only announce the winners on Tuesday πŸ˜” sorry for the delay!

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Bernard Baker

Another day of anticipation and excitement πŸ”₯

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Mauricio Jaramillo • Edited

Upss, May 6 past and I'm exited too like Bernard.

Please, give us news folks.

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Dominik Kundel
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Mauricio Jaramillo

Hoooooo sorry please, a cache mistake.

Congrats.

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Marko Shiva

Who want to team up for making the app or a service that will probably use most of the twilio services and that is related to COVID-19

I can do either apps or anything else that can be a for example a website that will use some of the services of the Twilio to notify people about current events. Although the application that I plan to make web and mobile should have a potential lifetime that is longer then the emergent situations like the virus epidemic.

Also I am experienced in SIP communication and VoIP protocols and could work also on project that is related to audio or video compression.

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Waldemar Penner

I would like to hear some thoughts about an App that is related to COVID-19 Communications.

I'm thinking about an App that helps to connect those people who need help (Buying groceries, Take the dog out, Get medicine, Just someone to talk) with those people who like to help.
The first interaction would be with a text bot(via SMS, WhatsApp...) where the people specify some general information (What do you need?, Where do you live?, What do you want to help with?)
and the app would match and connect these people.

What do you think?

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Gab

It says in the rules that your progress should be tracked using a hashtag. Is that part required for a valid submission?

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annthurium profile image
Tilde A. Thurium

The final submission has to be done through #twiliohackathon as a hashtag, yes.

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Gab

I was referring to the posting about your progress, sorry for being unclear

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Tilde A. Thurium

Oh, sorry about that! No, you are not required to update on your progress.

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Gabriel Leonte

Hi Dominik,

Its required to "Document your project journey along the way with the #twiliohackathon tag." as a separate post? Or i can tell more about the journey when i submit the project post?

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Dominik Kundel

That’s totally fine! Regular documenting of your progress is encouraged but not required 😊 only a submission post

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Gabriel Leonte

Thanks, it will be more easy for me to build the project. Also nice talk at JSHeroes 2018 :D

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dkundel profile image
Dominik Kundel

Thank you πŸ€— and happy hacking

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Marco David Martinez

OMG last day !!!
I just need to complete my office work hours then i will spend the rest of the day finishing up my project

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Dominik Kundel

Good luck!

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Filipe Herculano • Edited

Hey, I have a question, is using just sendgrid.com also eligible for this? (I know it says any Twilio products but the branding is kinda different around sendgrid)

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Megan Speir

Hey Filipe! Yes, Twilio SendGrid is eligible.

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Filipe Herculano • Edited

Hey @meganspeir , I signed up for SendGrid but I can't seem to apply the promo code and the trial that was suppose to offer 40k emails only allowed me to send 100 emails πŸ€”

I submitted a support ticket, let me know if you guys can take a look, my app is almost done πŸ₯³

EDIT: Seems like now the trial sign up button appeared in my account :)

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Phil Nash

Very quick off the mark Sophia! And a cool project too! πŸ‘

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Jonas GrΓΈndahl

Cool initiative and a lot of time to build something :P

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Phil Nash

We can't wait to see what you build with all that time! πŸ˜ƒ

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Alessandro Belotti

Hi guys can I join the group? excited about this :)

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Instinct

Can someone list the APIs and services we are allowed to use in Twilio? Well, actually there a lot of them. :P

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philnash profile image
Phil Nash

Check them all out here, they all count: twilio.com/products

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Instinct

Can we use any one (or more than one) in this hackathon?

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philnash profile image
Phil Nash

Yes! πŸ˜ƒ

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ayeolakenny profile image
ayeolakenny

Hi Dominik, is my project still valid if i do all in the twilios console?

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Dominik Kundel

Can you elaborate a bit more on that? Are you using Twilio Functions or TwiML Bins or what are you doing in the console?

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ayeolakenny

Im using twilio autopilot and twillio functions

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Dominik Kundel • Edited

You can actually export the Autopilot bot using the Autopilot CLI if you choose to host the code for it on GitHub twilio.com/docs/autopilot/twilio-a...

But yes that's valid to submit :) just make sure for us to be able to do the same things and validate it works

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Michael Lustig - halfjew22@gmail.com

Can we do a referral sharing thing here?

twilio.com/referral/Gbv52f

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Godwin Agedah

How do i use the promo code, if i already have an account

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Dominik Kundel

Hi Godwin,

The promo code is for upgrades only. So you'll need a new account/project.

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Swastik Baranwal

How many members can be there in one group?

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Tilde A. Thurium

I don't think we have a limit on number of group members.

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Bernard Baker

Is there a link to this post that I can use in dev.to mobile?

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Molly Crendraven

Possibly dev.to/devteam/announcing-the-twil... ? (I'm on mobile currently)

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SMAmmar

I am interested in taking part in this Hackathon. kindly add me to the relevant groups

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Josh LeBlanc

Hi,

When submitting a project, do we just make the post here, or do we submit it to the code exchange?

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annthurium profile image
Tilde A. Thurium

Submit your project as a DEV post using this suggested template with the #twiliohackathon tag, and also submit it to code exchange. Thanks!

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Suvin Nimnaka

Hey Dominik, How can we verify if the project is submitted and valid up to your requirements?

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Rishabh Gupta

Hey, just wanted to know. Do we need just need to write a submission article or also a documentation of your update on the project ?

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Bernard Baker

last day of the hackathon.... 🧰

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instinct profile image
Instinct

Can't we send a local file using Twilio Whatsapp API?
If not, please suggest some workarounds.
If yes, please do tell how to do so.

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Phil Nash

To send files through the Twilio API for WhatsApp you need to be able to host those files somewhere. When you send a message with a file you need to pass a URL to the API. If you are doing this locally, you could make the files available with a web server on your machine and a tunnel like ngrok that can create a URL that points at your local machine.

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Bernard Baker

Hi,

I've just updated my README.md. Can someone take a look and let me know if I've missed anything?

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dkundel profile image
Dominik Kundel

I think it looks good! Didn't test the instructions but on first glance everything looks good

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Marko Shiva

Who want to team up for making the app or a service that will probably use most of the twilio services and that is related to COVID-19

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adityamitra profile image
Aditya Mitra

Can we participate in groups?

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern

Yup!

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lushs profile image
Troy Kirinhakone

Who were the winners?

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dkundel profile image
Dominik Kundel
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shiva2k2

Hey all, would love to particiapte in this, seems to be very interesting and working with timelines is the real fun!

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uzayg profile image
Uzay-G

Hey. Could you explain why the hackathon is 18+ in the competitions terms? I was super hyped up to participate...

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Dominik Kundel

Hi @Uzay-G,

I'm sorry you were hyped and then realized you couldn't participate. Twilio requires people to be 18+ to take part in the hackathon because only then they are legally able to accept our terms. It is valid feedback though and we'll explore options to allow minors in our next hackathon.

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Carlo Brillantes

Hi all! Is it okay to ask about the grand prize "$1,500 USD gift card or equivalent "?

What kind of gift card is that? Where can we use it? Thank you.

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Jean Luc kabulu πŸ‡¨πŸ‡©πŸ’™πŸ¦

You must include at least one Twilio API in your project. Use the promo code DEVHACK20 for $20 when you create your account.

If i have already an account how to use this code promo ?

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Dominik Kundel

Hi Jean Luc! The promo code is unfortunately only for new accounts. You should be able to create a new project to use the code though. That said you also don't have to use the code itself just any Twilio API

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nagasai65 profile image
Nagasai Kollipara

can I join in hackathon now

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philnash profile image
Phil Nash

Yes! There is still time to submit, you've got until the end of the month. Good luck!

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gabrielleonte profile image
Gabriel Leonte

Hi Dominik, a short question, should i mention a category in my submission post? I just post it, and i saw to other participants a Category Mention after "What i build"

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bam92 profile image
Abel Lifaefi Mbula

Hi there,

I can't see the rule that explains how you'll select project and award prizes.

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philnash profile image
Phil Nash

Good point, the terms do say this:

7.2. Judging. All Submissions will be judged by judges selected by Twilio. Twilio reserves the right to select the judges and to establish criteria for judging. Decisions of the judges are final and binding, and any deliberations among the judges may be kept confidential by Twilio. Judging will take place on or about on May 1, 2020. Twilio, may, in its sole discretion, conduct judging on a different date.

Projects will be judged based on the categories and the additional rules under "How to participate".

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dooskybant profile image
Bant

Hi! Thanks for posting this look really interesting! I have a question I saw in the competitions term that someone can participate as a team is there a limit of how many people can that team have?

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Phil Nash

I don't think there's a limit of people, but there's only one prize per team not per member. So you can code together but one person should submit it. Do mention that you worked with multiple people on it though so we can celebrate you all!