We made a PDF file alongside the submission, check that out for a more comprehensive description of the project
Empower
Inspiration
We were inspired by sites like Craigslist or the Swedish site Blocket. We also took inspiration from second-hand stores. A team member worked in a recycling center and saw how many perfectly usable products get thrown in the trash because the original owner had no use for them anymore. This inspired us to create a new site that is focused on streamlining the giving process to promote a circular economy and a stronger community.
What it does
The website allows users to specify the max range they are willing to travel to pick up a product. After the account is created they can see new products as they pop up within the max distance and get a location for the product. Users can also create new items and their location is automatically added to the item. When a user comes within a certain range of the item, they can choose to claim it, which will remove it from other people's dashboards. The great thing about the platform is its peer-to-peer distribution. The platform only facilitates the interaction that takes place between the giver and the receiver. This face-to-face aspect of giving is often lost in the typical charities or thrift stores.
How we built it
We used flask for the backend, mostly due to the team's familiarity with it. The ORM we settled on was SQLAlchemy, more specifically a flask integration with it called Flask SQLAlchemy. This choice was also mostly down to prior experience. For hosting we used Heroku, the server we used is a UNIX WSGI server called Gunicorn. We also used Docker to make sharing our progress easier. The code resides in a Monorepo on GitHub. On the front end, we used React with Chakra UI to make development faster. We used Vite for the project builds. We also used Geocode for reverse address searching from coordinates. The server for the front end was Nginx.
Challenges we ran into
Since none of the team members were highly experienced we found development to be quite slow which was problematic because of the short deadline. Since it was a relatively large team of five people, we had some conflicting opinions on several matters, but we managed to overcome those issues and build an amazing and hopefully inspirational product.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Due to the short time frame, we had to move fast in all aspects of the hackathon, both development and business. To make everything happen we sometimes had to put aside our personal opinions and compromise, which resulted in a better end product. We are also proud of ourselves for delivering a finished product. It was not easy nor stress-free, but we pulled through in the end.
What we learned
We learned a lot from this hackathon, from video creation and script writing to docker and flask to PDF formatting and business language. But the most important thing we learned was cooperation and the value of compromising.
What's next for Empower
Empower might see continued development, but we think it might just stay a hackathon project for now. The team members are all attending school and are therefore quite busy. The hackathon was very fun and a great learning experience for our team!
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