The results were inspiring. We worked with teams that built a virtual shopping app powered by Oculus & RingCentral. We saw demos of an app that texts parents when their teenagers are texting while driving. Another team built a service that helps shoppers buy stuff online simply by texting their requests to a phone number.
It was the kind of creative energy we wanted to see, and we hope some of these apps will turn into real-life business applications that we can showcase on our App Gallery and offer up to RingCentral’s 300,000+ customers.
Here are the winners from this weekend’s event:
3rd Prize: ‘pro.speckt’ ($500)
Pro.spekt is a back-end that allows bloggers, brands, and companies to build fan following based on phone numbers and SMS rather than email address. The idea is that SMS are more likely to be read than emails, and many users would prefer to receive important, personal updates on their latest blog or news site via SMS. By integrating RingCentral’s messaging APIs, the team built an opt-in setup where followers submit their phone numbers. The blog or content site can then leverage those numbers for updates and marketing campaigns, including geo-targeted use cases. Congrats to team members Amanda Legge, Fernando Jorquera, Kevyn Arnott, and Megan Johnson.
2nd Prize: ‘Walk This Way’ ($1,000)
1st Prize: ‘Respondu’ (DJI Insipre Drone or $3,000)
Honorable mention: ‘TextBuy’
A close 4th place, as determined by our panel of judges, was given an honorable mention. TextBuy, from the brothers Alex and Harrison Chen, had the tag line of “Text and Buy Anything Instantly”, which pretty much captures the use case. Want to buy 5 bananas but too lazy to go to the store or even open an app? Just text the phone number RingCentral provisioned and TextBuy will interpret your ask and send orders to the correct online retailer. This cool service was also one of the 15 finalists at the Launch Hackathon.
Check out our highlights video to see the best moments from this year’s hackathon event.
We’re not done! Our own Kira Makagon will be on-stage at the Launch Festival on Wednesday, March 4th, right after Marc Benioff’s keynote. She’ll show off some of the work from the Launch Hackathon, as well as talk about why developers, integrators, and businesses should try out the new RingCentral Connect Platform.