Bevy | Devpost

Inspiration

“I attended a machine learning seminar, and I was the only woman in the room. It felt suffocating and humiliating when people ignored me, when they doubted my knowledge of the most basic aspects of programming, when they discredited me. This was not the first time such a thing occurred and I know it will not be the last, but it wears you down. It becomes harder to see yourself as equal, and soon you begin to ignore yourself, doubt yourself, and discredit yourself.” Ji Yoon Lee

What it does

About 47% of today’s workforce is made up of women, with a growing number of women entering male-dominated fields. However, even with women’s growing presence in the workforce, many STEM-related fields seem resistant to gender diversity. Perpetuating gender stereotypes, microaggressions, and gender discrimination in these fields cause many women to leave their profession. For example, almost 40% of women who gain engineering degrees eventually leave the profession. We want to help women succeed in STEM, so we started our project with the theme of women empowerment. We knew that empowerment would begin with developing a support system, and for women in the workforce this would mean finding personal and professional networks where they can feel safe communicating their ideas. In helping to develop a support system, we would also help in building women’s confidence in their own abilities and encourage women to stay in the fields they are passionate about. Our web application, Bevy, is an online platform for women to connect with each other, share ideas, and build project teams. The word “bevy” refers to a large group of people. Thus, with our application, women with similar interests can easily connect and work together to bring their ideas into reality. With Bevy, we hope to help women sustain careers in male-dominated fields. Bevy provides a convenient platform for women to build their support systems through camaraderie, mentorship and business networking. Women are able to communicate their ideas in a supportive environment, and if they want to start a personal and passion project, Bevy makes it easy for women to find collaborators by “matching” women who have similar interests and are open to working on projects. The ability to pursue personal and passion projects would give women the opportunity to test and develop their skills and build their confidence in their abilities. Gendered microaggressions and discrimination in the workplace take a toll on women, warping their perception of their own competence and leading many women to doubt their capabilities. By offering an environment that uplifts and inspires women to follow their ambitions, Bevy puts women in the spotlight and gives them the internal visibility necessary to grow their person and careers in the face of gender inequality.

How we built it

We modeled our web app off the MERM stock. It implements a mongodb atlas database for the backend. We used node.js and react for our frontend. Because it is our first time ever making a web app, we decided to use libraries like the material ui library to make our lives easier.

Challenges we ran into

Because none of us had very much experience in web development, there were a lot of tutorial videos and a lot of trial and error before we were able to create our final creation. One of the biggest problems we had was with the implementation of the login screen. We had trouble routing between pages. However, we were able to overcome these issues by contacting mentors.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

This is our first time creating a web app and using JavaScript, so we were proud to finish this project in the 10 hours we were given and submit it for a hackathon.

What we learned

We learned JavaScript, node.js, react, and mongodb.

What's next for Bevy

We want to add more customizability, with added features to make our matching algorithm better. Information such as personal projects, interests, and range of search (for the users who have more in-person and hands on projects that require collaborators to meet up) would be added, with keywords helping to further refine the matching algorithm. We would also like to add a direct messaging feature on Bevy so that users can connect without having to use another communication platform. We would also need to implement the web application on a server and connect it to a database, ensuring that we can support application usage for a large audience. Implementing this across campuses, we can partner with college campus organizations, for example here at UIUC we could speak with organizations such as WECE, SWE (Society of Women Engineers), WIA (Women in Aerospace), etc. Even working with organizations outside of college campuses, such as NCWIT (National Center for Women and Information Technology), who have a large outreach with women of all ages who are passionate about STEM.