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  •   almost 4 years ago

Our thoughts …

Hello everyone,

First of all we would like to congratulate all the winners of the Challenge!

Like the majority of the participants, we put a lot of time and effort into our skill and we were super proud to release our project "Card2Throw" in November last year.

Since we unfortunately did not win any of the prizes with our skill, we would be happy to know which exclusion criteria led to this result, as we believe that we complied with all rules and specifications of the challenge.

We also wondered to what extent the videos and the Devpost project pages influenced the outcome of the Challenge.
Furthermore, we noticed that all the finalist skills are based on a multimodal experience - so was there any real chance for other skills to win under these conditions?

We know from our monitoring tool that the Card2Throw skill was activated by the jury, but we could also see that no actual game was played and neither our In-Skill Purchasing capabilities nor any other features of our skill were tested.

To be honest - yes, we are a bit disappointed not to be one of the finalists after all the effort we put in - of course we are. We understand that the outcome of the challenge is not up to us, but we would also appreciate more information about the evaluation of our skill to be able to score in the next challenge.

We don't intend to attack you in any way, and we weren't even sure if we should actually post this to the discussion forum, but we hope you can accept our constructive criticism and maybe there will be a chance for a short personal conversation in the next few days?

Anyway, thanks for providing this great challenge.

Best regards :-)
Jonas and Benedikt

Mail address: card2throw@gmail.com
Project page: https://devpost.card2throw.me

“I knew that if I failed I wouldn’t regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is not trying.”

  • 3 comments

  •   •   almost 4 years ago

    I know how you feel...you won't get a satisfactory answer. Hackathons are not sports where real Points dictate the winner. lot of it is subjective per the judges. There's no way to precisely break down the "point". Alexa ones are competitive so make your choice next time.

    However, what I wish Amazon would do is let devs know which Category matter more. Clearly, Games have higher chances of winning. Small tips like that would help focus our time instead of doing some wild ideas and never come close.

  • Manager   •   almost 4 years ago

    Hi Jonas, Benedikt, and Tom!

    Thank you for the message and submitting a skill for the challenge. Unfortunately, we are not able to provide specific feedback to every participant on their submissions. It's not feasible given the quantity.

    With that said, I know that all eligible submissions and skills were reviewed and evaluated across a variety of factors by Amazon Alexa teams, and remaining prizes will be announced on January 13th.

    Thanks and happy new year!
    Stefanie

  •   •   almost 4 years ago

    Hi Stefanie and Tom, thanks for your reply.

    Well - at least we could take at least one thing out of the Hackathon (unfortunately not a prize :D):
    So this hackathon shows that there is obviously neither any transparency towards the participants nor any kind of fairness regarding the evaluation of the submissions.
    It almost seems as if projects are not judged by their quality or the previous published evaluation criteria but more by the motto "What fits into the image of our organization" - kind of.

    Anyway - congratulations to all winners: I am not in any way trying to talk your projects down. I am more concerned with criticizing the lack of transparency of the Challenge.

    And again - thanks for the challenge - which actually invited us to our first hackathon. Unfortunately it was probably my last one.

    Greetings Jonas

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