Who we are
We are four freshmen majoring in computer science at the University of Maryland. None of us have been to a hackathon before, so our main goal was to just learn anything (and maybe create a working app!)
Inspiration
Following in the spirit of the EqualsEquals hackathon, we did some research about underrepresented minorities and wanted to find a way to help push towards more equality in the tech industry.
We discovered that while we already knew that underrepresentation was a problem, the consequences are more extreme, socially and economically, than we initially thought.
Fortunately, we also discovered that there are a number of excellent initiatives already out there, but it seems that there is not enough awareness about many of the programs/resources. For instance, we talked to some of our friends who said they would love to see more minorities in tech but didn’t really know how they could get involved.
Thus, we decided to make an app to combat the above problem.
What it does
Our app provides a streamlined experience for both educating users about underrepresented minorities in the tech industry and also provides easily-accessible resources for users to join the fight for equal representation.
Furthermore, because we used React Native, our app works on both Android and IOS!
How we built it
Although we have experience with Java from our CS classes, we figured that a hackathon would be the perfect time to learn something new! After reading about the different options for creating mobile apps, we decided upon using React Native due to its cross-platform functionality and its popularity in industry.
None of us have experience with React Native, so it was definitely a difficulty learning how to even do even basic things. We managed to survive through a combination of Youtube tutorials and Facebook’s React Native documentation.
Accomplishments that we’re proud of
Since this was our first time using React Native, we’re pretty proud that we actually managed to get a finished product working. Also, we’re pretty happy that we managed to work well together as a team. Oftentimes group projects can result in many complications, but we managed to resolve our conflicts easily.
What’s next?
We had many excellent ideas for the functionality of this app, but unfortunately, the implementation of them would be outside of our time limit for this hackathon.
Notably, it would be great if we could implement a forum-like community system where people can post different opportunities and organizations that are doing great things for minorities in tech. Then, our “Interact” page could get continuously updated with these postings.
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