Reality matters

In February we asked you to build an open source app that integrates Estimote Beacons or Stickers with Slack API. RealityHack #3 was all about ideas for an office that’s both smarter and more fun to work at. We loved the projects you submitted but there can be only one winner, so without further delay… that winner is:

Note.cntxt by Donnie Propst and Adam Stone.

Congrats guys! You win our awesome gadget pack with Estimote Location Beacons, Flic button, Particle Maker Kit, Pocket Operator, Intel Edison, and Proto-X SLT drone. Plus, swag from Estimote and Slack. Expect a postman knocking on your door soon. Big thanks to you and all the other participants: we hope you had as much fun building the apps as we had testing them.

Good job RealityHackers!

Note.cntxt won because it addresses a problem many businesses are struggling with: work/life balance. Sometimes an idea comes to your mind well after working hours. Or you suddenly realize what was that you didn’t remember at the office. It’s tempting to message someone RIGHT NOW and disrupt their evening, isn’t it? With Note.cntxt, you can send people notes via Slack anytime without pushing them to work overtime. They will only receive the message when in range of the Estimote Beacon at their desk. Neat, huh?

We also want to shout out to some other participants. RealityHack is an open source contest, so that thousands of developers who want to try building apps with Estimote Beacons can access resources for inspiration and education. And there is a lot to learn and to be inspired from.

Help Desk by Romin Irani.

Printers and coffee machines: two devices that are essential to every office… and are also what nightmares are made of, when it comes to maintenance. Help Desk app lets you quickly report issues with workplace equipment to your Slack team, based on proximity to Estimote Beacons.

SlackBooking by Richard Doyle and Francois Delpech.

Room booking and availability is an idea that came up often among RealityHackers. Richard and Francois built a smart little app that handles this well. You can equip rooms with beacons and then check whether they’re occupied through Slack.

PreSense by Chay Choong, Chng Wei Sheng, Huang Jing Jie, and Joel Ang.

This one was designed for large, multi-story offices but what we love about PreSense is that it can also come in handy for teams working remotely. It lets you toggle your status between available, busy, and not present. Thanks to Estimote Beacons, presence is updated automatically and each team member’s status can be looked up in Slack. Additional points for having both iOS and Android apps.

SlackStatus by Paweł Brągoszewski.

SlackStatus is another app designed to help distributed teams keep track of status of team members. The app is sleek and uses Estimote Beacons to detect when you arrive at your desk. And the #status channel on Slack is a helpful feed of team activity.

You can also find links to all five mentioned projects on our Community Portal. Soon the Slack team picks will be listed among Slack’s community integrations, too!

I learned so much exploring these submissions. Many organizations would find value in these apps. The participants were obviously passionate about using beacon technology to improve working lives. The open source projects are inspiring examples of integrating your physical workplace with Slack to make your working life simpler, more pleasant and more productive.

Taylor Singletary, Slack Developer Relations

RealityHack #3 comes to a close. Thanks again to all participants and stay tuned for the next challenge. It’s coming soon and we’re gonna make it even more awesome!

Wojtek Borowicz, Community Evangelist at Estimote