Athena

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  basic overview

Inspiration: We were inspired by a simple problem; people have real problems, but the right person with the right knowledge is not always easy to find. Looking at the Sustainable Development Goals, we chose this problem ourselves and asked, what if people from different fields could come together and actually help each other solve these problems? That idea became Athena.

What it does: Athena is a social platform where people can share real-world problems, discuss them, contribute ideas, and learn from people with different expertise. Instead of struggling with a problem alone, you can bring it to a community that may have the knowledge to help.

How we built it: We built Athena from the ground up using HTML, CSS and JavaScript for the frontend, Python and FastAPI for the backend, and SQLite for the database. We also built authentication, image uploads, comments, likes, and problem completion into the platform.

Challenges we ran into: One of our biggest challenges was getting all the different parts to communicate properly, especially authentication, the database, image uploads, and the frontend working together. There were definitely moments where something worked in one place and broke somewhere else, but solving those problems taught us a lot.

Accomplishments that we're proud of: We actually built a working platform. Users can create accounts, post real problems with images, see problems from other people, like and comment on them, and mark their own problems as solved. Seeing the whole thing work from end to end was probably the most satisfying part. and the version 2 is the main part we are looking forward to. integration of AI as the controlling or nervous system, addition of more categories, roles and discipline and securing funding to push it past testing and enter the real world.

What we learned: We learned that building a real product is very different from just writing code. You have to think about the people using it, how the pieces connect, and what happens when things go wrong. Most importantly, we learned that a simple idea can become something much bigger when you actually build it.

What's next for Athena: V2 — Social + Intelligent Athena

AI integration AI-powered problem understanding AI-powered problem classification/routing Intelligent category and role matching Richer general feed Problems from different fields visible together Better user profiles Users can write about themselves Users can explain what they do Users can show what they can offer/help with Professional identity/expertise information More account/profile settings Following users Followers/following functionality People discovery Click a problem poster → view their profile Connect with people through their profiles Chat/messaging between users Better social interaction Better discussion/collaboration Expanded problem-solving experience V3 — Larger Athena Ecosystem Advanced reputation system Contribution/reputation recognition Reward systems Problem-solving competitions User wallets Payments Advanced analytics Advanced moderation/community management Educational and knowledge resources Expert discovery Advanced search and discovery Video and additional media support Larger/scalable cloud infrastructure Migration from SQLite to a production database Mobile applications Additional professional fields and roles

Built With

• css3
• fastapi
• html5
• javascript
• python