Jess Lee

for The DEV Team

Posted on Apr 2, 2020 • Updated on May 4, 2020

Announcing the Twilio Hackathon on DEV

#announcement #twiliohackathon #twilio #opensource

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 community bragging rights, build impactful projects with Twilio, and win sweet prizes. Twilio has some of the most powerful APIs around town, and we are really looking forward to seeing what everyone in the community creates.

Read on for more of the details!

The Twilio APIs

You are allowed to use any of the Twilio APIs in your project. You’re likely already familiar with Twilio’s SMS products, but you might not know that they have a bunch of other awesome products you can leverage for your submission.

So, while you’re very welcome to submit an SMS project, we’re also excited to review and reward entries that leverage programmable voice, video, chat, cross-channel conversations, and the rest of the Twilio products!

Prizes 🎁

4 Grand Prize Winners (one in each category):
- $1,500 USD gift card or equivalent 💸
- Twilio Swag Pack ($300 value) 😎
- SIGNAL Conference Ticket ($2500 USD value) 🔥
- Your project showcased on Twilio CodeExchange, with a winner badge ✨
- $300 USD credit to the DEV Shop 🎁
- DEV “Twilio Hackathon” winner badge 🏆
Runner-up Prizes (10 total):
- $150 USD credit to the DEV Shop 🎁
- Your project showcased on Twilio CodeExchange
- DEV “Twilio Hackathon” runner-up badge 👏
Participants (with valid projects):
- $50 USD credit to the DEV Shop 🎁
- DEV “Twilio Hackathon” participation badge 💪

Regardless of whether or not you win, your project may be showcased on Twilio CodeExchange!

How To Participate 👋

In order to submit a valid project, please follow the submission process and rules closely.

How to submit 📨

Join the Twilio CodeExchange community by filling out their program agreement.
Document your project journey along the way with the #twiliohackathon tag.
Submit your project as a DEV post using this suggested template with the #twiliohackathon tag. Please be sure to include the code repository in the post. Embedded live demos, screenshots, and code snippets are also encouraged!

Additional Rules 📝

You must include at least one Twilio API in your project. Use the promo code DEVHACK20 for $20 when you create your account.
Your code must be hosted publicly . We prefer GitHub but if you’re using another host (i.e. GitLab, BitBucket), please be sure to include the GitHub username you used to join the Twilio CodeExchange community somewhere in your submission.
Your repository must have a README with clear setup instructions - here is a sample template.
Your project must be started and completed between April 2 - April 30.
Your code must be licensed with a permissive license (i.e. MIT, Apache-2)
Your project should not have security vulnerabilities or violate security best practices (i.e. hard coded credentials, plain text passwords)
Your code cannot violate Twilio’s Terms of Service or Acceptable Use Policy
By making a submission, you agree to the competition's terms.

Community Support 🙋‍♀️🙋‍♂️

The Twilio team will be available to help anyone who runs into issues or has questions related to the API. You can reach the Twilio team by leaving a comment in the Twilio Hackathon help thread. We’ll also be setting up a dedicated DEV Connect group channel for more synchronous help. To join this group, just leave a comment in the help thread. This will be a great opportunity to spend time with Twilio’s amazing team, and your fellow community participants.

Twilio will host office hours in that DEV Connect group channel every weekday during the following times:

Mondays: 3-6pm EDT
Tuesdays: 3-6pm UTC
Wednesdays: 3-6pm AEDT
Thursdays: 3-6pm PDT
Fridays: 3-6pm EDT

Additionally, Twilio will be hosting a weekly office hours session on their Twitch Channel, starting on April 2 at 4-6pm PDT.

Finally, we have a community update thread where you can share your ideas and gather feedback as you begin making progress on your submission. We encourage you to share your progress along the way to generate more excitement and benefit from additional community feedback suggestions!

Important Dates 🗓

April 2: Hackathon Begins!
April 30: Submission Due at 11:59pm PST.
May 4: Winners Announced!
May 5: Winners Announced!

We hope you have fun, learn some new things, and build something you’re proud of. We can’t wait to see what you build!

Happy Coding!

Top comments (223)

Dominik Kundel • Apr 2 '20

Hi DEV community 👋

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 💖

imgntn • Apr 2 '20

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.

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.

Dominik Kundel • Apr 2 '20

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...

Thomas Bnt • Apr 2 '20

twilio.com/legal/twilio-dev-hackat... return 404 error :c

Dominik Kundel • Apr 2 '20

Sorry for that glitch. It's back :)

Jess Lee • Apr 2 '20

Should be working now!!

Dominik Kundel • Apr 2 '20

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.

imgntn • Apr 2 '20

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.

Dominik Kundel • Apr 2 '20

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...

Michael Lustig - halfjew22@gmail.com • Apr 3 '20

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! 🙏

Bernard Baker • Apr 3 '20 • 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.

Michael Lustig - halfjew22@gmail.com • Apr 3 '20

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?

Bernard Baker • Apr 3 '20

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?

Comment deleted

Bernard Baker • Apr 3 '20 • 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!

Bernard Baker • May 21 '20

I think you should pursue this idea.

Rohit Prasad • Apr 5 '20

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.

Dominik Kundel • Apr 5 '20

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.

Simba Mupfukudzwa • Apr 11 '20

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

Michael "lampe" Lazarski • Apr 2 '20

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.

Dominik Kundel • Apr 2 '20

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!

Michael "lampe" Lazarski • Apr 2 '20

Thank you very much :)

Waleed • Apr 2 '20

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)

Dominik Kundel • Apr 2 '20

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

Benjamin Ashbaugh • Apr 2 '20

Hello,

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

Dominik Kundel • Apr 2 '20

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

Marko Shiva • Apr 3 '20

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

кαтнєєѕкυмαɾ • Apr 6 '20

Hello Dominik, have a nice day.

What is the URL for submit my project?

Dominik Kundel • Apr 6 '20

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.

кαтнєєѕкυмαɾ • Apr 6 '20

Thank you Dominik Kundel

Lucas Queiroz • Apr 2 '20

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

Dominik Kundel • Apr 2 '20

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

Rishabh Gupta • Apr 2 '20

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 ?

Dominik Kundel • Apr 2 '20

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

Bernard Baker • Apr 2 '20

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?

Dominik Kundel • Apr 2 '20

Hi Bernard,

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

Bernard Baker • Apr 4 '20

What service do you use?

Dominik Kundel • Apr 4 '20

I personally either use Zapier or Azure Functions

Bernard Baker • Apr 8 '20

Great 🤸 I got set up with Zapier 🚀

Paolo • Apr 3 '20

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.

Dominik Kundel • Apr 3 '20

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.

Paolo • Apr 4 '20

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.

Dominik Kundel • Apr 4 '20

Yes I think that's a fair assumption 😊

Bernard Baker • Apr 8 '20

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.

Nikhil Nair • Apr 3 '20

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.

Dominik Kundel • Apr 3 '20

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

Nikhil Nair • Apr 5 '20

Gotcha. Thanks for the response, Dominik.

Carlo Brillantes • Apr 20 '20

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.

🐰 • Apr 11 '20

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?

Dominik Kundel • Apr 11 '20

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 :)

krishna kakade • Apr 5 '20 • 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

Dominik Kundel • Apr 5 '20

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

krishna kakade • Apr 6 '20

ok thank you!

Ben Halpern • Apr 2 '20

I am very excited to help anybody who's interested—more on the ideas side of things than the execution. Twilio's APIs are ripe for this kind of contest 😄

Michael Oppong • Apr 7 '20

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

Phil Nash • Apr 7 '20

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.

Michael Oppong • Apr 7 '20

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

Phil Nash • Apr 8 '20

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

Michael Oppong • Apr 8 '20

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.

Phil Nash • Apr 8 '20

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!

Michael Oppong • Apr 8 '20

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

Faraz Patankar • Apr 2 '20

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

Bernard Baker • Apr 8 '20

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 🌏

Ben Halpern • Apr 3 '20

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

Wilfredo Pérez • Apr 3 '20

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

Ben Halpern • Apr 3 '20

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

Wilfredo Pérez • Apr 3 '20

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

Bernard Baker • Apr 8 '20

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.

Wilfredo Pérez • Apr 9 '20

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

Bernard Baker • Apr 9 '20

Great 🤸

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

Wilfredo Pérez • Apr 9 '20

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

Bernard Baker • Apr 9 '20

Ok. Twilio has a node SDK 🌞.

Peter Kim Frank • Apr 2 '20

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.

Megan Speir • Apr 2 '20

Hello DEV friends 👩‍💻

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!

Michael Lustig - halfjew22@gmail.com • Apr 2 '20

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

Carlo Brillantes • Apr 20 '20

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.

Dominik Kundel • Apr 21 '20

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

Ranvir Singh • Apr 2 '20

Does anyone want to team up for this?

Aditya Mitra • Apr 2 '20

May I?

David Mendoza (He/Him) • Apr 2 '20

I would love to

Amit • Apr 4 '20

I would love to.

Gyandeep Singh • Apr 3 '20

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

Craig Gehrig • Apr 9 '20

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

Phil Nash • Apr 2 '20

What's up everyone! 👋

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 😄).

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

Haroldo Vivallo • Apr 23 '20

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?

Dominik Kundel • Apr 23 '20

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

Phil Nash • Apr 24 '20

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?

Haroldo Vivallo • Apr 24 '20

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).

Phil Nash • Apr 24 '20

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.

Peter Kim Frank • Apr 2 '20

👋 Great to see you Phil :)

Phil Nash • Apr 3 '20

Hey Peter! 👋

Carlo Brillantes • Apr 20 '20

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.

Devin Rader • Apr 2 '20

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!

Darren Hill • Apr 2 '20

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

Megan Speir • Apr 2 '20

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

Darren Hill • Apr 4 '20

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 😉. Thank you again

James Hawkins • Apr 2 '20

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

Jess Lee • Apr 2 '20

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!

Tamas Polgar • Apr 2 '20

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?

Brodan • Apr 2 '20

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.

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

Tamas Polgar • Apr 2 '20

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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DEV Community

Announcing the Twilio Hackathon on DEV

The Twilio APIs

Categories

Prizes 🎁

How To Participate 👋

Community Support 🙋‍♀️🙋‍♂️

Important Dates 🗓

Top comments (223)

Hello Dominik, have a nice day.

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