HokieExchange

Main page of Hokie Exchange showing the "browse all [services]" option

Inspiration

Half our team-members are Hokies who've had small gripes like, "I have to do my laundry right now, but I have to go to class," or "There aren't any career fairs coming up, but I want my resume reviewed." We created HokieExchange to solve exactly those: a one-stop app for students looking to make quick money by selling their services, and for students who are in need of a simple solution of finding a service that is integrated with their Hokie life.

What it does

On HokieExchange, students can sign up using SSO (the demo uses Google OAuth2) to easily create an account without having to manage a separate login. Students can either be buyers or vendors where vendors list their service with an availability. Buyers then book an available slot for a service, confirm the transaction in-person at the time of the service, and that's it. It's a lightweight platform for buying and selling services specifically to the benefit of college students at Virginia Tech.

How we built it

HokieExchange is a web-app, and this is our tech stack:

Backend: FastAPI, MySQL, Databricks, SSO
Frontend: Next.js

Challenges we ran into

Like every hackathon, we ran into many of the common issues:

Scope constraints
Time constraints
Locational constraints (team members don't all live together)

We burned through a substantial amount of our time coming up with an idea that actually fit into a track that we all liked and had skills for; We didn't start coding until 13 hours after the hackathon started.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The idea we came up with on its own is an accomplishment that we're proud of. Disregarding the scope constraints, we believe this app has genuine utility and a place in students' lives. Whether they need quick cash or a simple task done, this app is extremely light-weight and capable.

We're also proud of the accomplishment of simply finishing a viable demo/prototype. Hackathons aren't easy given the short time periods over which they take place, and our team understands that very well.

What we learned

Over the course of this hackathon, we learned how to:

Work quickly under heavy time constraints
Collaborate efficiently
Delegate non-overlapping tasks for quick development cycles

FastAPI was an unfamiliar framework for a majority of our team, so learning the ins and outs of the relevant portions of the framework for the purposes of this hackathon was a big challenge. Nonetheless we managed to gain familiarity and comfort working with it in a short time span due to experience with web development and other backend frameworks.

What's next for HokieExchange

It's hard to say what's next for HokieExchange since we are all college students with tight schedules and geographical constraints, but we would hope to implement all the features left out of the demo we see in the final vision of HokieExchange without the pressure and time constraints of a hackathon.