Welcome to TADHack

TAD-HACK-squareTADHack (Telecom Application Developer Hackathon) is a global event, created and driven by the grassroots of the industry to help developers discover the latest ways to add communications to their application, services and business processes. And compete for $20k in prize money. It is unique because it brings together all relevant telecom application development tools and technologies in one event for both education and competition.

When?

Friday and Saturday the 6th and 7th June 2014 . We want developers with families, that often struggle to take part in weekend hackathons, to still be able to attend the education sessions on the Friday and then bring their learning back into their businesses.

Where?

Madrid and the World. We’ll be streaming the sessions live, as well as having content on the TADHack site before the event, AND allowing remote entries so you do not have to be in Madrid.. There will be some limitations on accessible capabilities, but we’re trying to be as inclusive as possible.  Keep an eye on this section as we have some exciting announcements coming up.

What?

It has never been a more exciting time to add communication into your application, services and business processes with the explosion of telecoms tools and technologies. The development themes covered in TADHack include:

  • Telecom APIs (including any IP based communication services; video communications; rich communications services; the good old PSTN);
  • WebRTC (Web Real Time Communications) that extends communication services to any web-connected device;
  • CRBT (Call Ring Back Tone) APIs opening up new possibilities simply through the act of calling;
  • In-Call services, that is new services within the call made possible through IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem);
  • SMS/USSD applications for developing markets and e-inclusion such as mobile payments, banking, e-commerce, bitcoin for emerging markets;
  • Converged applications, e.g. taking the idea of Amazon Mayday and embedding customer experience management everywhere;
  • In-network services, including NFV (Network Function Virtualization) and SDN (Software Defined Networks);
  • Business vertical focused applications in healthcare, automotive, government, entertainment, financial, customer care, etc.
  • Mash-ups across themes, really anywhere you think telecoms can make life better.

Who?

TADHack’s sponsors are the companies prepared to put their money where their marketing mouth is and be judged head-to-head with competitors to help educate and build the telecom application developer community. The founding sponsors making TADHack possible are:
Apidaze
hSenid Mobile
Nexmo
Solaiemes
Telestax
Tropo

TADHack is an independent grassroots initiative to raise the profile of telecom application developers with the resources to support them, and create a sustainable and profitable telecom application ecosystem. Founded by Alan Quayle with support from within the application developer community and from telcos. Alan has spent most of his life building telecom applications within telcos (BT), vendors (Lucent, Cambridge Technology Partners), his start-up Teltier (presence applications), and working with many tens of telecom application developers around the world. Alan writes a blog providing insights into the telecoms industry.

Why?

Telecom application developers exist and are grossly underserved by the telecom industry. They include: telco independent software vendors, system integrators, enterprise developers and many other developers building apps that live either in the core telecom network, enterprise data centers or public cloud.

Telecom application developers extend operator infrastructure in a variety of ways using SS7, SIP, Web APIs, and many new cloud-based technologies. There are hundreds of thousands of developers out there building commercial telecom services and applications all solving similar problems, face common challenges technically and commercially, and are key to Telecom’s future survival.

TADHack was requested by the attendees of the first ever TADSummit in the closing conference discussion on what we should do next. TADSummit also put together the TAD Manifesto, which documents what is required to make the Telecom Application Developer ecosystem a reality, through identifying the needs and responsibility of the three main actors in this ecosystem: developers, vendors and telcos.

 

Please let us know what you think, we’re trying to make a difference and want TADHack to meet your needs.