The Voicehacks Hackathon at VOICE will be one of this year’s largest voice-first hackathons. Attendees hail from universities, industry and coding schools throughout the New York region.
Participating judges, evangelists and speakers have joined the roster from companies including Samsung, Amazon and Twilio with more to be announced over the coming days.
Want to be a part of this exciting inaugural year? Register using the form below!
The format will be a one day sprint-style hackathon intended to allow developers, designers, product managers, entrepreneurs and technology enthusiasts up to innovate development in a fast paced and fun atmosphere where attendees can bring their own ideas to life. Teams and individuals are encouraged to register and we will build teams for those interested in joining one.
The event will be FREE to register for and food and beverages will be provided along with SWAG, prizes and raffles.
Location: Newark, NJ
Currently, Adam Cheyer is co-Founder and VP Engineering of Viv Labs, a startup simplifying the world by providing an intelligent interface to everything. Viv Labs was acquired by Samsung in 2016. Previously, Adam Cheyer was co-Founder and VP Engineering at Siri, Inc., a company aimed at fundamentally redesigning the face of the consumer mobile experience. In 2010, Siri was acquired by Apple, where Mr. Cheyer became a Director of Engineering in the iPhone/iOS group. Mr. Cheyer is also a Founding Member and Advisor to Change.org, the premier social network for positive social change, and a co-Founder of Sentient Technologies.
As a Senior Solutions Architect for Amazon Alexa, Franklin is passionate about knowledge sharing and enabling others to succeed. He actively seeks out creative solutions to complex business and technical challenges. His experience ranges from startups to large enterprises, spanning multiple industries. In addition to eight AWS certifications, he holds an MBA, as well as chemical engineering and math degrees. Franklin was an early adopter of Amazon Alexa, and now is working to share his knowledge of Alexa with developers.
Jagdish Repaswal is the founder of HeyMojo Inc., a technology company that helps small businesses leverage voice, chat and direct messaging to boost revenues, reduce customer acquisition cost and increase retention. The HeyMojo technology platform combines Voice, Natural Language Processing, Machine Learning, Analytics and Messaging to enable small businesses with the tools and know how to serve their customers better. HeyMojo’s product line-up includes automated chat and voice solutions for websites, social messaging apps and voice controlled personal assistants such as Amazon Alexa and Google Home. Jagdish is a serial entrepreneur with a successful record of building two technology companies: Summly (AI news aggregator) in USA that was acquired by Yahoo for $30m and MangoReader (digital storybooks for children) in India, that reached over 6M children in a span of 3 years and was acquired by EkStep , an NGO run by Nandan Nilekani, Co-Founder of technology giant Infosys. Jagdish has won several global awards for his startups and his work on technology and is a prominent speaker on a range of topics including Artificial Intelligence, Digital and Direct Marketing and User Engagement.
Jennifer Arnold leads partner engineering at Viv Labs. Over the past 15 years, she's held various product management and business development roles focused on mobile and data center software, silicon and technologies. She has a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and MBA. Jennifer is passionate about driving the expansion of Bixby’s services ecosystem through strategic partner engagements.
John Alioto is a senior technical leader, Evangelist and software architect. He currently serves as the Chief Evangelist at Viv Labs where he brings the good news about the Bixby Platform to developers. He is the former CTO of Technical Evangelism & Startup in Microsoft’s Developer Experience and Evangelism group (DX) in the United States. John is the former CTO of Microsoft DX West Region where he ran DX’s startup mission in Silicon Valley. Before joining Microsoft, John served as a co-founder and CTO of a security startup focused on Machine Learning. John has more than 25 years of experience in the technology industry and a degree in Computer Science from UC Berkeley. John enjoys all types of fitness activities, has two kids and two dogs and once held weapons grade plutonium in his hand.
Jonathan Pan is currently a technical evangelist for Viv Labs, the masterminds behind Samsung's Bixby 2.0. Jonathan was a software engineer at Samsung, prior to his current role at Viv Labs where he now works to create new content to inspire developers. His passion lies in empowering 3rd party developers to bring their exciting and novel ideas to Bixby. Jonathan has become an expert at building Bixby capsules and also an expert at helping others to build their capsules. When he's not building capsules and working with developers, he is taking care of his cats.
Kamila leads Alexa’s VC and startup business development practice, with the goal of accelerating the adoption and innovation in voice. She spent the last two years building voice experiences for ecommerce brands and charities, and the last 20 in financial services funding entrepreneurs in emerging economies via micro-finance programs, and figuring out funding at large B2B and B2C financial institutions including banks and payments companies. She lives and works out of Seattle.
Lizzie is an iOS and web developer and developer evangelist at Twilio. She studied computer science at Bryn Mawr College and in her free time, likes tennis, ping pong, and all things Disney.
Roger Kibbe is a Senior Developer Evangelist for Viv Labs, the engine behind Samsung’s Bixby 2.0. As a developer evangelist, Roger gets developers excited about building amazing new AI and voice experiences using Bixby. Roger has over 20 years of experience leveraging technology for strategic business advantage. Prior to Viv Labs, Roger founded both a voice product startup and voice consulting firm. Prior to that, Roger spent many years leading Omnichannel technology strategy for Gap Inc and has many years of technology consulting experience. Roger has a degree from UC Berkeley - Go Bears!
Built Baby-Boom that uses Alexa and Twilio to create a voice reminders and tips for expecting parents: https://github.com/voicehacks2019
Winners (left to right): William Cheng, Forrest Meyen, Carter Kwon
Used Alexa to help people make plans and join them
Winners: Back Row: Nathan Shaw, Stephen Ecsedy Front Row: Melissa Slavin, Armaan Joseph, Brianna Boyce
Used Twilio to create a voice app that will give medical information based on your symptoms
Animals and Actions uses Alexa to create a game that will help kids with speech disabilities learn how to speak based on sounds that they hear.
Winners (left to right): Lei Xiang, Erik Raj, Sunjana Kulkarni, Yao Du
Makin Capsule uses Bixby to create a survey app for spreadsheets for small businesses.
Winners: Jerry Wei and Surasit Nithikasem
