Symbl.ai, a Conversation Intelligence API platform for developers, partnered with Telnyx, a leading CPaaS API platform for developers, to incentivize developers to hack out hacks for TADHack Global 2021, a yearly conference spearheaded by Alan Quayle, a legend in the history technology and telecommunications.
Running from September 25th, 2021 to September 26th, 2021, TADHack Global, sought to provide support for developers from many companies, among whom were both Telnyx and Symbl.ai, to build programmable communications alongside hundreds of developers across the globe.
TADHacks Global had over 1000 registrations, kicked off a new initiative TADHack TEENS in Sri Lanka (150 registrations), had 3 in-person locations (Berlin, Chicago, and Orlando), and South Africa achieved a MASSIVE 400 registrations, an amazing turn-out at TADHack Orlando at Valencia College.
Sponsors and Prizes
Among the global sponsors, there were: Symbl.ai, jambonz.org, Subspace, AWA Network, and Telnyx. Each provided support and resources to fuel the engagement for the hackathon.
In terms of a standalone prize for Symbl.ai, a team called RescueR (i.e., Ebtesam Al Haque, Doug Moore, Amy Sliwinski, Muntaser Syed, Vincent Tang, Davindra Tulsi, and Chris Woodle), create a submission where an autonomous rescue bot with sonar mapping and telecommunications technology to quicken response time of trapped victims. The same team won Telnyx’s $2500 Verify prize.
Telnyx and Symbl.ai’s Joint Prize
Telnyx and Symbl.ai provided a bonus prize of $4,000 to any team of developers capable of combining Telnyx CPaaS APIs with Symbl.ai’s programmable conversation intelligence APIs. The Joint Symbl.ai for “AI driven communications” became a team with phenomenal success. Of a series of impressive submissions, the team composed of Lily Madar and Steven Goodwin, created Wizard Chess, Colloqui11ly, and Podcast Annotator.
Wizard Chess, their first submission, is designed to enable people to “play chess with your voice, making it accessible for those with visual impairments or less able motor skills. The code is a basic Node app, running on a server which starts by making a Telnyx call to the conference room, which symbl.ai then joins. From there, anything said into the phone is processed by symbl.ai and passed via websockets to the web page. Computer moves are relayed by voice in the opposite direction to only the human player. (In earlier drafts the voice spoke to everyone, including symbl.ai, but since the moves the computer spoke were invalid for the human, nothing bad happened!)”
In furtherance of their emphasis on accessibility, Colloqui11ly provided an accessible conferencing solution (using TTS and STT). It makes the conference available to all by allowing some users to interact via text message (both to “hear” the chat, and respond) while others get the audio experience.
Last but not least Lily Madar and Steven Goodwin created Podcast Annotator, a hands-free note-taking while listening to a podcast stream. You first start a podcast from the webpage, which initiates a call to your phone. (But it could also be triggered by DTMF tones.) At this point you can listen to the podcast, and say things like “Good point” and “must look that up”. These phrases are transcribed and added to a timeline for later review. Once the podcast ends, this review is sent via SMS.
If you would like to learn more about the event, check out Alan Quayle’s Enterprise Connect 2021 Hackathon Report: https://blog.tadhack.com/2021/09/26/tadhack-global-2021-summary/
