Global TADHack Matrix hacks

Over 800 hackers all over the world spent this weekend working on hacks and prototypes in the Global TADHack hackathon. Some were working from home, and others gathered at one of the 14 official locations. Matrix were physically present at the London and Lisbon locations, and we also handed out two prizes (a massive amount of tessel modules) to the best hacks using Matrix in some way or another.

After a hectic weekend, over 90 different hacks were submitted and presented. There was a live stream available (archive here) so that everyone could watch all the submissions. We were of course particularly interested in Matrix-related hacks, and there were several:

• Matt Williams continued his Project Clearwater/Matrix integration from TADHack-mini London earlier this year; this time he added support for IM{'<->'}SIP MESSAGEs.
• Rob Pickering bridged his company's keevio system to Matrix via the AS API.
• Sacha Nacar and Mike Dauphinais wrote a sign-language interpreter that uses Matrix for conversations.
• Igor Pavlov made it possible for users of Lytespark to be contacted via Matrix and OpenMarket's SMS AS when they are offline.
• Phani Pasupula showed a PoC for using Matrix as a platform for starting a Dialogic XMS conference.

In the end, we had to pick only two of these awesome hacks, which wasn't easy. We are really encouraged by seeing the Matrix ecosystem grow bigger - and more bridges to various existing systems being built; this is exactly what Matrix needs!

We awarded our two prizes to Igor for his use of OpenMarket's SMS AS, which adds a new and very wanted feature to Lytespark - and Sacha/Mike for their inventive sign-language -> Matrix translator. Congrats to all of you! We were also happy to see Phani win one of Dialogic's prizes with his hack!

Below you can watch our two winners' presentations:

The TADHack blog has a list of all the winners: local winners and global winners. In total $36k worth of prizes were won!

Thanks to everyone who participated!