Block Contest Outcome & Beyond

[Widgetic]

We’re starting work on our first block for the contest and there are a few questions I was hoping we can get an answer to:

1. Will blocks, after being published, automatically show in Airtable for whoever wants to use them, or there is another submission process we need to go through?

2. To what extent do new custom blocks require to be open-sourced, beyond the contest? For example, there are many integrations like Typeform and others, which have to be in sync with their servers & not open sourced for obvious reasons.

3. For the contest, I presume the blocks submitted need to be free to use. Are there any considerations we need to keep in mind if we plan to offer subscriptions to future blocks, right inside Airtable? (as to minimize friction)

And lastly, this isn’t a contest-specific question - but we were supposed to get “a 3-month Pro trial on your workspace” from Devpost in order to build the block, but the URL in the email doesn’t work. Can someone at Airtable update this account with that coupon? Thanks. :slightly_smiling_face:

[Michelle_Valent]

Hi Widgetic,

Excited to hear that you’re building for the Airtable blocks contest. To your questions:

1. By “published”, do you mean after being “submitted” to the contest? We’ll be featuring winning blocks in our examples gallery with the developer’s permission. You won’t need to submit through another process.

2. We will also be looking for contest submissions that might be suitable to be included in the blocks gallery (i.e. can be installed directly from the blocks gallery without needing to use the Remix from GitHub feature). You can use the existing blocks as a guide to the user experience and design standard that we’ll be looking for. In this case, our engineering team will be working with the developer after the contest concludes to make sure the block passes our design and security review. If relevant, you can then add in any non-open source additions you’d like to make then. Please note that your contest submission still needs to work as a stand alone open source block though.

3. Correct, contest blocks should be free for the community to use. If you plan to offer subscriptions in the future, we encourage you to look at some of our existing blocks (like the Send SMS block) that use an API token to verify access to a paid service. One consideration to keep in mind is that you should not allow or facilitate financial transactions inside the Airtable platform itself. Please reach out to blocks@airtable.com if you’re still unsure.

Thanks,
Michelle

[Widgetic]

Thanks for the reply Michelle.

1. I meant what will this process be like, beyond the contest itself. If someone builds blocks for Airtable, how does the community discover them? Especially if there is no review process in place.

2. For the contest, the rules state that we can use external SDKs as long as there are permissions - and since we are the builder of the larger platform, there shouldn’t be an issue with permissions.

If the Block contains any third party SDKs, APIs, data or other software, Entrant must have permission to incorporate such third party materials pursuant to a valid license that allows Entrant to grant the rights to the Block set forth in these Official Rules. Entrant must provide Sponsor with proof of a valid license to Sponsor’s satisfaction upon Sponsor’s request or Entry may be disqualified in Sponsor’s sole discretion.

3. Ok, I’ll reach out about this when we explore paid blocks (after the contest).

[Michelle_Valent]

Hi Widgetic,

We have an example blocks gallery, where the community can discover new blocks and developers can submit new blocks. If you scroll down to the bottom of the page, you can see a button that says “Submit your block”. You can do that at any time!

Sounds good re: your last two points. Excited to see what you build.

Cheers,
Michelle

[Widgetic]

Missed the submit button. This is perfect Michelle, thank you! :hugs: