The author of this article is Kyle Kelly-Yahner, and he discusses creating GIF polls using Twilio MMS and Wedgies. The process involves storing the Wedgies API key in an environment variable, setting up an Express route to handle incoming SMS messages, preparing the MMS message with a to, body, and from field, and sending it using Twilio's NodeJS client library. The function that hits the Wedgies API returns a poll if successful, or an error object otherwise. The process can be used to create polls that can be shared and voted on via phone, such as sports scores or reader polls.