From hacking the weekend away to serving up the very last cup of cold brew coffee on Wednesday, the Flowroute team had a blast at DeveloperWeek 2017!
Hack & Flow
This year’s DeveloperWeek Hackathon drew over 2,000 participants competing in 28 different challenges. Flowroute sponsored two challenges, one for the most innovative use of Flowroute in IoT and one for the most innovative use of messaging in an app or service. Our developers were amazed by the creative and thoughtful projects that the teams submitted. Family games, fitness planning apps and plant health monitoring capabilities were just a few of the innovative use cases we saw.
The winner of our IoT challenge was the team Autoreco’. They connected a raspberry pi to a flow meter that measures how much water is coming through a valve, in this specific use case they connected the flow meter to a washing machine. The meter utilizes user provided information on how much soap they use in each load of laundry to determine when they will need to restock. When the meter is triggered, it will text the user a reminder to purchase more soap and attach links to different options for buying soap. This use case is not limited to water usage, it could be generalized to any kind of sensor-based smart device. Think of it as an auto-detecting Amazon Dash button with an SMS-based interface.
The most innovative use of messaging went to team Mestate who developed an app for landlord and tenant communication. The app can host all rental related documents and act as an interface for conversations related to renting or upkeep. Through an SMS translation feature, landlords and tenants who speak different languages can have conversations through the app, which will automatically translate the messages into each user’s preferred language. The app tackles two problems in the rental industry, the challenge of managing paperwork and the barriers that language can cause between landlords and prospective tenants.
Flow & Brew
The DeveloperWeek Conference and Expo was a high energy affair, and not just due to the copious amounts of nitro cold brew being served up in our booth. From presentations to demos and of course epic giveaways there was never a dull moment.
Flowroute’s Founder and Chief Product Officer Sean Hsieh presented on the ways developers can add contextual communications to their applications and services. We all know that communication is critical to any transaction, however, it is normally separated from the context of the transaction itself. This leads to a cumbersome experience for both the company representative and user. By embedding chat, voice or video into mobile and web apps both participants in a conversation can interact with more context, dramatically improving the customer experience.
Build with Flowroute
Want to learn more about the ways Flowroute is giving developers the tools to create awesome communications experiences? Check out the Flowroute Developer Center with guides and resources to help you get your next project up and running.
