HackDFW and the Cisco APIs winner is …

HackDFW is Dallas Design 24 h Hackathon. It gathers more than 2,000 students and pro devs, in a unique venue “Gilleys”, composed of 4 hudge theaters, see it by yourself.

worth noting I was part of the night sift ;-)

main amphitheater, and no, this is not a concert !

an isolated hudge hack room

another calm and isolated hack room

anther amphitheater for lunch and demoes

the Cisco APIs challenge

Tropo and Cisco Spark APIs were featured for the 2016 HackDFW edition.

With a Cisco crew of 8, Cisco Developers Network — @CiscoDevNet deeply engaged with the overall audience that could candidate for positions at Cisco. We also mentored 30 teams with Tropo & Spark APIs, plus partner integrations : Built.io and Zapier Cisco Spark integrations.

Then, the Cisco APIs challenge was to build the best collaborative service, leveraging Cisco Spark and Tropo. Best team would get a Phantom 3 drone, camera enabled, per team member, valued 800$ each.

Once again, we got pretty impressed by how much the teams managed to deliver in 24 hours, some of them having low programming skills. Guess the API designs and documentations are pretty handy. You may check by yourself.

and the winner is … UniKonnect

These 4 students team from University of Technology UT Dallas started from scratch on Saturday morning.

Their business case can be stated as

• Some private companies make K$ money by connecting students to universities, and help them choose the best for them, but you get no contact with these universities for real, true for India, China…
• UniKonnect helps connecting students to universities for cheap, by giving students direct contacts with advisors (current and former students).

How ?

• Advisors and Students register at the Web Site. Registration involves 2 factor authentication with Tropo.
• Advisors declare which university they know about.
• Students pick universities they want to get feedback for.
• Students are then proposed rated advisors for these universities, and get 2 options to connect.

1. click to SMS to notify an advisor that a student want to get their feedback, with a Tropo phone number invitation to join a conference,
2. click to chat in a private 1–1 Room, dynamically setup through Cisco Spark REST APIs. Via Spark built-in free conferencing feature, student and advisor can upgrade their experience on the fly and share a video conference.

Cisco Technologies sump : Tropo for 2 factor authentication SMS, Tropo SMS to inform of meeting requests, Tropo phone numbers, WW, 80 countries, to start phone conference, Spark free rooms for IP chating and VoIP conference.

Check the project submission for more info…

Worth mentionning 2nd team : Gambit Spark/Tropo connect

Gambit is a computer science association at Texas A&M commerce. This 4 people team created a unique service to connect Blind and Deaf disabled persons.

How ?

• the Deaf person adds the Gambit bot in a Cisco Spark Room, and configure it with the Blind person phone number
• As the Deaf person chats in the Room, Tropo speaks the messages to the Blind person mobile phone,
• Tropo also listens to the Blind person speeches, and transcripts these back to the Spark chat room,
• the Deaf person reads the transcripted messages.

Technologies sum up : Cisco Spark, Tropo, but also Built.io Spark integration and Zapier flexible webhook assistant to connect Tropo transcript to the Spark room.

Check the project submission for more info…