Say Hello to Rahim, Our New Developer Evangelist

Say Hello to Rahim, Our New Developer Evangelist

Love at First Sight

Like John Britton, I first learned about Twilio through the Twilio/Boxee Developer Contest. I saw the announcement on Boxee’s blog, and decided I’d spend the weekend working on my entry, BoxeeQ. The goal was to make Instapaper for video. Users would be able to text in the ID of a YouTube video and have it added to their Watch Later queue in Boxee. If they had a Netflix account, they could link it to BoxeeQ and then text in the name of a movie to have it added to their Netflix Instant Watch queue.

I ended up using APIs from three different companies (Boxee, Netflix, and Twilio) that weekend, but Twilio stood out. I signed up for a trial account on Friday, and by that night, the SMS portion of my project was complete. My app was making and receiving texts in a matter of hours—too cool. I was hooked. I kept playing around with Twilio’s API, and eventually started doing contract Twilio projects for companies, and started my own little thing helping artists create phone-based auctions and audio tours.

Being a Part of Something Big

I’ve spent my life as a developer, but always wanted to do a little more. Until recently, I had no idea there were Developer Evangelists in the world. A job where you get to code, write, travel, and meet other engineers? Sign me up. And for a company I’ve admired for the better part of a year? Yeah, that’s a no-brainer. Not only is Twilio disrupting the telecom market, it’s helping create companies that shake up all kinds of other industries. That’s something worth moving 400 miles for.

My focus is going to be on the West coast, and I’ll be spending most of my time in our SF office. So stop by and say hi. I’ll be writing blog posts about your projects, speaking at events, and helping developers in whatever way I can.

If you’re working on something cool that uses Twilio, let me know about it rahim@twilio.com, or at @rahims.