Inspiration
Forming teams for a class project or a hackathon can be hard when you come in knowing no one there. Leading up to SpartaHack, I saw the troubles with trying to form teams in advance for hackathons. While there was a helpful formation session before hacking began, teams that were formed in advance had a great head start. In addition, it wasn't possible to hear all the ideas and experience levels. That is when I thought of Converge, an easy to use mobile application for finding and creating teams.
What it does
Converge allows you to easily create or join events. You can then post ideas or dev profiles to that event. All members of the event can cycle through the ideas and freelancers, Tinder style. When a user comes across an idea or freelancer they like, they can hit connect and send them a message giving more information about their background or add-ons for the idea.
How I built it
I used Xcode, many git branches, and an open mind (and redbull)!
Challenges I ran into
I struggled at first with implementing the Model. I started off just having the functions inside of my controller. Once I got a proof of concept I was able to read up on some online resources about MVC and migrated my functions to Models.
I also ran into trouble when architecting the data structure. I took a step back and mapped out on paper the different views that would require data and formed the trees accordingly.
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
As this was my first hackathon, I am very proud that I was able to successfully create a project and submit it within the time constraints.
I was able to create the app all by myself with little MVC and iOS experience. More specifically, I created Models that pulled, saved, and organized a lot of user data.
What I learned
I learned a lot about iOS development, MVC, and data architecture.
What's next for Converge
I would like to further build out the team connections. This would take the form of an in-app chat feature or some other form of communication. I also would like to expand this and find a fit for it in scenarios such as class projects.
Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.