"Hey Google" get me a new T-shirt

Everyone loves Google for its amazing technology and creative workspaces! Guess what? Google loves its developers as much as the world loves it too! And yeah, you don't need to be an amazing programmer to be a developer in Google's community. All you need to do is to spare 30 minutes, just once, and maybe have some creativity! That's it! Oh, and you should be really checking your mails periodically, although if you don't currently have this habit, your excitement would develop that for you.

What do we want?

So you arrived here to know about getting a T-shirt. Would you also like having a Google Home? Yup, that is also something you could get through this. And of course, as I mentioned earlier, an entry to Google's Developers Community Program! There're a lot of perks for it but let's first talk business.

What do we have to do?

In a nutshell: Make an Action for Google Assistant. 

But what's an Action? Action is a feature, or a sub-application of the Google Assistant. For instance, while talking to your Google Assistant you say, "What does preposterous mean?" This question of yours invokes an Action. There are several such Actions on Google, which make our lives much more fun. All you have to do is create one such simple action, preferably a useful one, and that'd be the end of your troubles.

That's all!

How do I start? 

Start by visiting this link - Google Actions. 

Now click on the 'Start Building' button, and that leads you to a page that welcomes you to Actions on Google. 

Click on Add/Import Project. Give any name to your project, don't worry you can literally name it anything. This isn't visible to the public.

As soon as you press the New Project button, you are greeted by an overwhelming list of cute cards that put different genres for your new Action. 

This is the time when you've to use your creativity. Think about what kind of action you want to have. Look at the cards, and think how could people have fun with your action. For example, you look at Kids & Family (a genre on that page), and think if there's any quiz, or a conversation you could make that would educate or entertain kids, or the entire family. 

Anyway, if you think in detail about this, great! But if you don't want to, and just want a T-shirt quickly, then you need to click on the Templates card at the bottom, and you are now at the simplest of web pages to ever exist. All you have to do is click on any one of the options: Trivia, Personality Quiz and Flash Cards. 

Just pick one topic of interest to you and which could interest people globally, and simply start making a quiz on it!

You don't really need any tutorial videos after this, since the Actions Console after this is pretty explanatory itself. However, if you still need some help, feel free to refer to these videos:
BlondieBytes' Tutorial on the simplest Action
Google's official tutorial on deploying Actions

What happens after building the Action?

If you're thinking that this would magically send the Google T-shirt to your doorstep, you're too innocent to realise that Google isn't stupid enough to keep it so simple. Google has a set of Terms & Conditions that it checks for every new Action to give the owner entry to its Developers Community. 

The Terms are pretty specific, and if you haven't made an Action yet you may not understand it right now. Still, here's a snippet:

After you build your Action, make sure you're adhering to all the guidelines on this page. Oh and yes, if you went the easy way in the previous section by making a quiz, make sure that you've added at least 50 questions in the data of your Actions. That's why I asked you to pick a topic of your interest. I think this was the only important condition for this kind of Action. 

Once you've finished your Action, it'll be sent for review. You'd receive a mail about that. Within 24 hours approximately, another mail, informing the result of the review is delivered to you. 

The mails would look something like this:

Keep checking your Google Actions console, the place where you actually built the Action for the status of your Action. In the left Navigation Bar, click on Releases. If you see something as Deployed, then fire up your Google Assistant and start trying it out! 

In less than a week after you see this status for your Action, you should receive a mail congratulating you for your new successfully deployed Action. You would receive a $200 Google Cloud Credit, which would only delight the Cloud Computing Enthusiasts, and, you guessed it right, a Google T-Shirt! You get to enter your shipping address, and your size and voila! The T-shirt would be at your doorstep! 

A couple of things to keep in mind, though:

1. Google sends out the T-shirt in batches, so it may take anywhere from a week to about a month for the T-shirt to reach you. 
2. In case you don't receive the expected mails, you can mail them your enquiries at aog-support@google.com. They do reply.

Getting a Google T-shirt is seriously very easy the trivial way. Even I went down the same path of making a Flash Cards Quiz for my favourite TV Show, FRIENDS. But it's important to think of the significance of this activity that you're doing. While on your quest for a T-shirt, you're actually contributing to the biggest tech force that exists and helping them improve the world. Is making a quiz a worthy help? No one is stopping you, but if you think you possess the art of thinking differently, then try making something which the world can actually use. You followed me up till here, don't follow me till the end. Make a world-changing action, because honestly, that could get you this!