Craft

Inspiration

Networking is arguably the most important activity to grow connections and bring forth abundant opportunities. However, it is considered a huge struggle for university students trying to break into the industry.

Take LinkedIn - the most dominant professional networking platform. Although LinkedIn allows you to connect to professionals and apply for jobs, it always feels restricting and overly formal. The LinkedIn environment is built around professionalism to the point where communication feels rehearsed and unauthentic. The language used is often formal and interactions are restricted around finding jobs.

For university students, this environment can be awkward, uncomfortable, and discouraging.

What it does

Our project, *C*raft, aims to address these challenges faced by university students by creating a platform that prioritizes and fosters genuine connections. We aim to encourage students to break into the industry by connecting with others in their industry (and even other industries) by connecting them through their interests and hobbies.

How we built it

Our project *C*raft is a website with the front-end built using HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript. For the back-end section, we used Python and JavaScript. We have also utilized JSON files as a temporary solution for data storage and data access.

Challenges we ran into

Creating an optimized flow for the user to navigate the *C*raft website. The process of outlining a user story and implementing it into a tangible product that can be utilized by users was difficult but ultimately rewarding.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Since we, as a group, did not have much experience in making and deploying websites beforehand, managing to have kind of a working demo by the end of the 24 hours was the accomplishment itself. Learning to link and integrate the back end with the front end was the biggest accomplishment so far. It was our biggest struggle and getting that integration is something we are immensely proud of. Seeing our final front-end take shape from when we imagined it during our brainstorming phase.

What we learned

As we continued to work on this project, we were fueled by the realization of how imperative genuine human connection is. It is a building block for growing a network and succeeding in different aspects of life. Having a spectacular resume and an abundance of side projects is great, and it can help you get a job - but often it is the network of people that adds that extra step. The one extra mile. The difference between a good position and a dream job. Even outside looking for jobs, having a welcoming and authentic environment is what motivates us to show up.

What we learned while working on the project itself was the art of self-learning. A feat that we might have complained about in the past became something we can take pride in. Every step of progress, no matter how small, overwhelmed us with joy. It builds the mindset of "we might be able to do this".

What's next for Craft

*C*raft currently accommodates individual users, and we hope to expand the user base so that corporations/ businesses can host communities within their organizations. That way, the company can hold community events once or twice a month to bring their employees together. Individuals interested in networking with current employees have the chance to do so. Additionally, this expansion allows people within the company to interact with people from different divisions; thus, solving the problem of lack of interactions between teams/divisions within the organization.

Note: To run this use this in the command line: python3 -m flask run --host=0 --port=5001 & then, in a separate terminal: open login.html