Twin Cities Code Camp

Does your application send users a text message when their order has been filled? Can they place an order by sending you a text? Can you interactively ask a user for pertinent information while they wait on hold for a support rep? Can you call them back when a rep becomes available? Can a user speak with a sales person in their browser if they have a question about a product on your web site? These are just a few opportunities, beyond the LCD or touch screen, that you might be missing to interface with your users. There are approximately 7 billion users on the global telecom network. That's over twice as many as computers and smart phones combined. Creating rich voice and SMS interfaces will allow you to reach more people and serve your existing customers better than ever before. Twilio makes creating these "no-screen" user interfaces incredibly easy. If you've created a web page before, you've already got what it takes to create a phone or SMS interface with Twilio. In this session, we will explore how and where to add telephony into an existing application using the Twilio platform. After a high-level overview of Twilio, we will live code new voice and SMS features into an existing web application. We'll demonstrate how developers can receive and respond to text messages and voice calls, and how developers can reach out to any of the ~7 billion users on the global telecom network at any time. Finally, we will demonstrate how developers can turn any web browser, iDevice, or Android device with a network connection into a VoIP telephone using Twilio Client. Code examples will be primarily JavaScript and Ruby, but the core concepts will be applicable to any server-side programming environment. No previous experience with telecom or a particular web development framework will be assumed. Voice and SMS are the next frontier of usability, and Twilio can help you blaze the trail.