Vonage Attends Hack the North 2020++
Published on January 26, 2021

Vonage is a proud sponsor of Hack the North 2020++. As a student-run organization, Hack the North's mission is to empower students of all experience levels and backgrounds with the mentorship and resources to turn their ideas into reality. 3,000+ students from all around the globe build incredible projects in just 36 hours!

This year, on January 12-17th, Hack the North hosted multiple workshops, giving anyone a deep dive into skills, tools and technologies to enable them to dream big and build. They also hosted tech talks, panels, and career sessions to help participants navigate the tech industry. On behalf of Vonage, Garann Means delivered an excellent Messages API workshop to Hack the North attendees.

The Vonage API Challenge

Vonage received over 50 project submissions for the Best Use of Vonage API Challenge! Projects were judged on wow factor, technical difficulty, originality, and design. It was a very tough decision, but we narrowed it down to one winning team and eight honourable mentions.

Challenge Winner: PrioVax

Congratulations to the winning submission for the Vonage API Prize, PrioVax! Our team was impressed with the ambition, and potential PrioVax has for positive social impact. Their team used an extensive list of tech outside of Vonage and implemented Vonage APIs in creative ways, submitting a well completed and connected project. A Nanoleaf Shapes Mini Triangle Smarter Kit was awarded to each member of the winning team for Best Use of Vonage API.

Project Inspiration: With the recent news about the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines in stages, PrioVax was inspired to develop an application to facilitate this process within local communities. One of the challenges that we are currently facing regarding vaccine distribution is the enormous amount of pressure placed on provincial governments and regional healthcare organizations to administer vaccine doses to qualified residents as soon as possible. PrioVax's goal is to help medical professionals identify, prioritize and contact high-risk patients at the click of a button by uploading their clinic/hospital's patient records onto our database. Having a safe and efficient rollout strategy can help save lives. By identifying and prioritizing at-risk groups using their ML algorithm, they aim to help mitigate future fatalities and strive closer towards eradicating the virus and moving forward in our day-to-day lives.

Functionality:

  1. Vaccine Prioritization for Hospitals and Clinics: Hospitals and clinics may upload their existing patient data (CSV) or create new entries within their web portals and receive priority values for their patients based on our machine learning algorithm. Following this calculation, the app automatically sorts all patients according to their priority of receiving vaccines.

  2. Mortality Prediction: Using key factors such as the person's age, gender and pre-existing health conditions, our Machine Learning model calculates the patient's probability of death due to COVID-19. This decimal value between 0-1 constitutes their priority value.

  3. Patient Notification: Based on their prioritizations, patients will receive alerts via SMS to schedule their vaccination appointments with their registered hospital or clinic.

  4. Scheduling (work-in-progress): With access to patient data, prioritizations and the notification system, our app can seamlessly integrate a system that manages the scheduling process for hospitals and clinics, all done through their web portal.

Watch PrioVax's demo video here.

Honourable Mentions

Accima

Accima, an app for replacing the modern HR system and entering a new recruitment system for the 21st century using a smart artificial intelligence system. With Accima, your qualification skills will be reviewed by artificial intelligence using mathematics and trained using machine learning. In Accima, we can review vocal skills for proper and appropriate tones. Are you applying for an actor/actress job? Your acting skills can be examined using vision AI to judge if you have adequate body movement and expected facial expression. With Accima, we can instantly grade your photography using a machine learning model trained in CNN (convolutional neural network). A sharp and crisp image will win you bonus points. A company in the process of hiring recognized your skills and abilities? Let's get on a live call with your recruiter. Accima built with Vonage API, and Facebook AI library, can accurately scan your tone and expression in real-time. Are you nervous? With Accima, you will no longer encounter any bias or discrimination from the HR recruiter. Everyone disregarding gender, race, and ethnicity, will have an equal and right opportunity to apply for a new job.

Watch Accima's demo video here.

min.it

min.it is a web application that makes meetings simple by generating meeting minutes in real-time. min.it will join a conference call and immediately start recording the conversation in real-time. As this is happening, the audio data is transcribed and simplified using natural language processing. After the text is simplified, phrases will begin to output on the min.it webpage. You get to see your meeting minutes come to life!

Watch min.it's demo video here.

MoniMango

MoniMango is a web application that offers users insight into how the general public feels about a specific stock using sentimental analysis. It takes the top 5 stock tickers and provides data that will help users make more informed decisions about how many people have talked about the stock within the past 24 hours, the general emotions towards the stock, and a recommendation based on the data. Furthermore, users that want to keep up with such stock can subscribe to bi-weekly updates via phone number for the following 30 days. Users can click on a stock card to find out more details, including the company overview and a monthly time series of the stock.

Watch MoniMango's demo video here.

Offline

Offline is a mobile application that allows you to surf the web from anywhere without internet access - all you need is a mobile number. By connecting one's mobile number to our application, people can search for what they need when they don't have Internet, and Offline will send an SMS message to web servers to fetch Google search results and feed it back to the interface. Pages can then further be click on and read in HTML. Offline also supports searching of maps and basic directions, which is critical for safety when outside without Internet. With Offline, we're able to deliver an online experience to those who weren't able to experience the web before.

Watch Offline's demo video here.

CopyCat

CopyCat is a teambuilding exercise, where players successively copy one another's actions, adding a new step each time. The CopyCat team thought it would be an exciting and rewarding challenge to use computer vision to recognize and detect similarities in these actions. Players join the game by opening a web app and entering a room, similar to a video call. At the start of each round, the current player must correctly perform all previous actions in the correct sequence. The video is recorded and sent to the PoseNet OpenCV model, which calculates the similarity between the video and the previous actions. If the player successfully performs all previous steps, they add their activity to the sequence. Otherwise, the player is eliminated. In either case, the game moves on to the next player. The game continues until only one player is remaining.

Watch CopyCat's demo video here.

Jump!

Jump! is a real-time multiplayer competitive exercise game powered by computer vision to compete by staying healthy. Two users can compete to complete a sequence of exercises (ex. pushups, squats, etc.) via a live link. Our app detects their current pose and analyzes it to determine when they have correctly completed the exercise. Think Just Dance, but with exercise, you don't need to be in the same room.

Watch the demo video here.

Pushup Battle

Easily create rooms to invite your foe and jump right into a video call to battle. With 30 seconds on the clock, our website's state of the art AI technology tracks everyone's pushup count to see who can do the most. The winner gets a shower of confetti and bragging rights (voice communication powered by Vonage API).

Watch Pushup Battle's demo video here.

vibecheck

vibecheck brings conversations and emotions into a custom and curated playlist fit for any moment. vibecheck is an application that converts voice call input into a curated music playlist. Based on the conversation, the application generates text and determines the emotion it holds. vibecheck correlates these sentiments to music by relating emotions like happiness, sadness, or "chill" to music features like beat and danceability. Based on the captured "vibe," the application generates a playlist fit for the occasion or interaction.

Watch vibecheck's demo video here.

In Closing

We thoroughly enjoyed supporting Hack the North 2020++. Providing the next generation of software developers with a place to learn, communicate, inspire, and collaborate is vital to Vonage. As we enter 2021, our team is committed to continuing to share our knowledge with students, teach them about industry tools, prepare for the future, and instill a greater sense of belonging in the developer community.

Nahrin JalalVonage Alumni

Nahrin was a Developer Educator for Vonage. She is passionate about building inclusive communities, addressing real-world needs with pragmatic software solutions, and creating technical content that is accessible to all skill levels.

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