starting page
customer: discover events near you!
bussiness: submit your event details!
subscription: subscribe for event notification!

BizBuzz! Bridging the Buzz of Business to the Community.

Inspiration

The relentless grip of COVID-19 sent shock through our global economy, leaving behind desperation. In the aftermath of the pandemic, the battle for survival was vital for small businesses as they desperately tried to stay afloat. The once buzzing tapestry of local businesses now bears the scars of widespread closures, affecting not just local communities but beyond.

A sharp decline in the number of active business owners hurts these small establishments as those individuals striving to make a living, face unprecedented challenges. Even today, the once lively buzz of local businesses remains subdued, with no resounding revival in sight even today.

According to a stark report from the NCBI, the period between February and April 2020 witnessed over 3.3 million businesses rendered inactive, marking a staggering 22 percent decline. This alarming plunge in active businesses stands as the largest ever recorded in the U.S., echoing a profound loss of business activity cutting across nearly all industries. And this has continued for the past 4-years.

It's vital for small businesses to endure and thrive as a matter of economic survival- to resonate as a testament to standing against adversity that echoes far beyond the confines of commerce. The journey to recovery is fraught with challenges, yet the heartbeat of local entrepreneurship perseveres, urging us all to stand united and rebuild what the pandemic sought to dismantle.

What it does

There is a huge community of students, especially in college towns. Students are looking for things to do on weekends, and spend money on a day to day. Especially after COVID-19, they're looking for ways to go out and about. We need to connect them to local businesses, that may have limited resources to market and advertise, looking to make business.
Local shops are able to come to our hub, "BizBuzz" to share details of local events made specifically for them at given times to encourage business growth and liveliness.
Customers can view the hub as a stream of events/deals, organized from when they are happening and in proximity to their location at any given time. They are able to search based on interest, location, and deal type. In addition, they can subscribe to get notified via email when a business posts an "event of some sort".
This is unique to other applications since we have bridged the gap between all different businesses. Instagram means you have to discover the business, Groupon doesn't allow time and proximity-based deals to pop up, especially for only certain hours. Eventbrite doesn't allow for deals/sales to be advertised and is not very lightweight.

How we built it

After ideating and wireframing with Canvas and Figma- BizBuzz was built using Streamlit, an open-source Python framework, used for ML and Data Science. Our database is stored and managed using SQLite, a C- library for Databases. For address fetching and distance calculation, we used the Google Maps API to make calls per request. To send email notifications, we used SendGrid's API, an SMPT service to connect our users and their emails to keep them posted.

Challenges we ran into

We had never built an application from scratch successfully, so this was a very interesting challenge! We spent hours exploring utilizing the AWS SNS service alongside the AWS CloudWatch service to send email notifications to our "subscribers". We dedicated time to the technical challenges of the learning curve of a new tool for all our members but with access permissions being denied, and connection issues between our app and AWS, we decided to approach the problem from another angle. We made the proactive decision as we explored other email-sending APIs, finally successfully seeing emails in our inboxes with the details of upcoming events near us!

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Among various achievements, we are very proud of the design of our app that each of our members carefully crafted. We conducted User Research and tested meticulously to be able to make sure we were catering best to our user's needs. With our users being both the business and Customer, we had to put ourselves in their shoes. By making user persona's, we were able to attend to all users' needs. We are proud of not giving up and dedicating time to strengthen our skillset and taking the initiative to solve this issue that we are so passionate about. We are proud to have gone above and beyond our initial list of features to add many more!

What we learned

We learned how to problem-solve with a focus on the User’s needs and wants. We wanted to make something that could have an impactful change on struggling communities and we learned the power of using technology to be able to create that. From just idea to code, we built a working application, ready to be used by our community per app growth. Some technical skills learned were: AWS, Python, API integration, database connection, and frontend customization. But equally important were the soft skills we learned of division of labor when necessary, time management to prioritize our project and our health, leadership skills of stepping up when required and problem-solving away every bug to have a working project in the end.

What's next for BizBuzz

In progress, we are exploring authentication as well as building a solid business model to create an ecosystem supporting both the customer and businesses. Next, we are building daily notification digests for our subscribers, business profile authentication, sorting features by location and time in our customer feed, and hopefully interested clients! We want to build what helps the user best!