** Looking for the 2017 AWS Chatbot Challenge? Visit here to get started! **

Bots on Slack can help your team be more productive and accomplish more tasks. They can help you increase visibility into your operations or help your customers easily get information through a natural, conversational interface.

However, building and running bots can be a time consuming and difficult task. Developers must provision, manage, and scale the compute resources that run the bot’s code.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could focus on building great bots without worrying about how to run and scale them? AWS Lambda is a service that lets you run code without provisioning or managing servers, and you only pay for the compute time you consume. With Lambda, it’s easy to build and run bots. You just upload your code and Lambda takes care of everything required to run and scale your code with high availability.

Start building a bot today. Enter the AWS Serverless Chatbot Competition for a chance to win tickets to AWS re:Invent in Las Vegas. See our sample bot on GitHub for how to get started.

How It Works:

Serverless Chatbot

*AWS offers a Free Tier for AWS Lambda and Amazon API Gateway. See the FAQ to learn more.

Eligibility

The competition will welcome submitters from the following areas: Australia, Canada (excluding Quebec), China (including Hong Kong), France, Germany, India, Israel, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, South Korea, United Kingdom, United States

This competition is open to the following:

  • Individuals (who have reached the age of majority in an eligible area of residence at the time of entry)
  • Teams of eligible individuals
  • Organizations (employ 50 or fewer people) - must have been duly organized or incorporated and validly exist in an eligible area at the time of entry
  • Large Organizations (employ more than 50 people) in eligible areas will be eligible for a non-cash recognition prize

Employees of Amazon or its affiliates, Slack, and Devpost are not eligible to participate.

Requirements

Main Requirements – Submissions must:

Be a working bot for Slack that runs on AWS Lambda.

  • Bots must use AWS Lambda and Amazon API Gateway. See our sample bot code for an example.
  • Be a new or existing bot (If existing, submitters must have updated their bot to run on AWS Lambda during the submission period).

Submission Recommendations – Solutions can, but are not required to:

  • Integrate Slack APIs, such as the Events API
  • Integrate other APIs, SDKs, and datasets as long as the developer is authorized to use them
  • Showcase natural language processing of chat conversations, use open source NLP libraries
  • Use additional AWS services
  • Be submitted to the Slack App Directory

Submit the following assets:

  • Include a demonstration video of the bot in action
  • Include a brief explanation of what the bot does and what makes it unique 
  • A way to access your bot for judging and testing 
    • Include a link to your bot code on GitHub (this repo may be public or private – if private, access must be given in the testing instructions provided). GitHub code will be used only for bot review and testing. 
    • Include all deployment files and testing instructions needed for testing your bot.

Other requirements:

  • All code should function as depicted in the submitted video and text description 
  • Submission must be in English 
  • Be substantially different from any other app submitted by the same submitter/team/organization 
  • Be the original work of the submitter, be solely owned by the submitter, and not violate the IP rights of any other person or entity

Hackathon Sponsors

Prizes

Serverless Slack Bot Hero Award (8)

- One (1) ticket ($1,599 value) to the AWS re:Invent global conference in Las Vegas, NV, USA (November 28 – December 2) + access to discounted hotel room rates for winners only

- Public announcement of your bot at the Serverless State of the Union address during AWS re:Invent

- Cool swag

- $100 in AWS credits

- Promotion for your bot by AWS

Serverless Slack Bot Large Organization Award

Non-cash, recognition award only for Large Organizations (with more than 50 employees)

Devpost Achievements

Submitting to this hackathon could earn you:

How to enter

  1. Register for the AWS Serverless Chatbot Hackathon competition.
  2. Create accounts on AWS and Slack.
  3. Visit the Resources page for links to documentation and resources for Slack APIs, AWS Lambda, and more.
  4. See our sample bot on GitHub for an example of how to build your bot on AWS Lambda.
  5. Shoot your demo video that demonstrates your Slack bot in action. Prepare a written summary of your bot and what it does.
  6. Submit your bot on AWSChatbot.Devpost.com before September 29, 2016 at 5pm ET and share your Github repo and deployment files.

Judges

Dr. Tim Wagner

Dr. Tim Wagner
General Manager, AWS Lambda, Amazon Web Services

Jeff Barr

Jeff Barr
Chief Evangelist, Amazon Web Services

Cecilia Deng

Cecilia Deng
Software Development Engineer, AWS Lambda, Amazon Web Services

Judging Criteria

  • Customer Value
    The extent to which the bot provides value to Slack users. Does your bot help solve a problem or painpoint for your users?
  • Quality of the Idea
    Creativity and originality of the bot idea. Is your bot differentiated or does it solve your users' problems in a unique way?
  • Implementation of the Idea
    How well the bot idea was executed by the developer. Is the bot technically sound and does it function as intended?

Questions? Email the hackathon manager

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