This year’s (dev)day was a great success.

Thanks to our enthusiastic attendees, passionate speakers, and the Fortellis team who worked to make our first-ever virtual hackathon event happen. Throughout the week, we learned about Fortellis’s latest innovations, got an inside look into the platform's API roadmap, and heard from some of the automotive industry’s brightest minds.

A day full of inspiration

The first day was packed with well-known industry influencers like Mike Amundsen, Michael Cirillo and Laurie Foster. Mike Amundsen is an internationally known author and speaker who specializes in helping companies capitalize on the opportunities provided by APIs, microservices, and digital transformation. Amundsen provided an insightful talk about the “4 M’s for RESTful to EVENTful APIs”. The 4M’s of APIs include four stages to make, manage, monetize, and market. Our attendees learned how they can use these stages to monetize and market their inventive APIs in a way that will transform their business.

Next, Michael Cirillo captured the audience with his enthusiastic and motivating presentation “Disturbing vs. Disrupting an Industry.” Cirillo shared his industry expertise as Cofounder and CEO of FlexDealer to explain the importance of establishing a relationship with not only your customer, but also your customer’s customer. Cirillo also encouraged our audience to choose their own adventure and challenged them to create new innovative solutions and connections while keeping the needs of the market in mind.

Our final speaker for the day was Laurie Foster, founder and president of Foster Strategies Group. Foster’s presentation left our attendees with 15 ways to leverage new mindsets and achieve greater success with confidence in the automotive technology industry.

Stay tuned as we dive deeper into all three topics in future Fortellis blogs.

Hackathon: full speed ahead

Our hackathon participants were off to the races to see who could use the APIs available on the Fortellis platform to develop an app in 24 hours. We were all eager to see their vision for the future of automotive commerce. Three teams took the podium to share their creations and their triumph.

In addition to the hackathon, the Fortellis team hosted an API Roundtable to feature a few of the third-party contributors who have published their APIs on the platform. Brian Miller from Fortellis hosted the event and had an insightful discussion with Guy Campbell of MarketCheck, Richard Bailey of DriveRightData, and Michael Mogley of Wirefree Thought LLC. The discussion highlighted API use cases and unique features, and provided an opportunity to gain feedback from the audience. This helped our panel gain new exposure to an integral audience of dealers and developers.

The Fortellis Product Management team hosted a session that highlighted the new capabilities offered on the Fortellis platform, our product roadmaps and API Directory and App Marketplace demonstrations. In keeping with the collaborative spirit of (dev)day, the Product Managers challenged our contributors to provide feedback for future product development.

Shyft's Auto-Connect app helps dealership service staff effortlessly engage with customers through live video conferencing while their cars are being serviced. This helps to boost customer confidence and satisfaction while building a trusting and profitable relationship. This Zoom-like conferencing tool for Technicians and other service staff works perfectly when reviewing multipoint inspections and repairs with customers who are not present. The Shyft Auto team built their new tool using CDK Drive Service and Repair Order APIs available on the Fortellis API Platform, while also introducing their own APIs to the platform. Their commitment, creativity, and hard work earned them prizes, including an Oculus Quest 2 virtual reality headset, a Razer™ HyperSpeed Wireless keyboard, Fortellis webcam tools, and a Fortellis mask.

A Fortellis Marketplace showcase

Day three began with the Fortellis Marketplace showcase. Brian Miller welcomed four contributors onto our virtual stage to demonstrate their unique marketplace solutions. Special guests included Brent Williams from Snapcell, Tony Colan from Proactive Dealer Solutions, Brandon Murphy from ActivEngage, and Bogdan Petrescu from Nylas. Each panelist shared their app’s unique use case and benefits, plus their success story of integrating with the Fortellis platform. Brent Williams from Snapcell shared how after only five weeks on the marketplace, their app had 50 accounts registered and using it daily.

Allowing our customers to transform their business by using integrated Apps and APIs on our platform is exactly what Fortellis is all about. Enthusiasm was in the air as they all began connecting on LinkedIn to collaborate on new products they can collectively bring to the market.

Thanks to the dreamers, innovators and developers!

It’s incredible what we can create when we put our minds together. (dev)day was truly successful thanks to our participants, keynote speakers, the Fortellis team. We look forward to our continued partnership and collaborating together for future events. Want to be a part of creating a better future for the automotive technology and retail industry? Visit Fortellis.io to learn how you can get started with building apps and publishing APIs.