Kinder was built created by me, Gamithra, with help from my brother, Johann. Let's rewind for a moment and take a look at how we got here.
Past
My favourite things in the world are Iceland, writing code, eating snacks, going to startup events and pondering about subjects such as communication engineering and independent economies - and I did not expect this hackathon to connect them all together when I signed up.
I had always wanted to become an Icelander when I grew up, so I started learning Icelandic on the internet before finally packing my things and getting a one-way ticket to Iceland when I was 17. I ended up graduating from Menntaskólinn á Tröllaskaga, ended up being the first girl to win Forritunarkeppni framháldsskólanna, getting all tangled up in politics and falling in love with small communities in Westfjords thanks to Blábankinn at Þingeyri.
I plan to be back soon - but since leaving Iceland in early 2019 I gained a ton of experience in the startup community in Tallinn, Estonia (that's where were from!), started a gamification startup called Adact, gotten a job as a security consultant in the information security industry and moved to live with a small community of hackers in a repurposed chapel in North Wales, and had a lot of time to figure out what it is I want to dedicate my life towards - see my mission statement!
Kinder is an indirect outcome of all of these experiences - and I'm really excited to see where it'll go.
Present
During the hackathon, we cycled through a bunch of ideas before getting to where we are now. We asked ourselves the important questions and made sure we knew which problems we were solving, if these were in fact real problems and not just us throwing a nice-looking solution at something we wanted to believe to be a problem. It took a lot of courage to ditch some of the ideas we had already started working on - but it just made us stronger.
I got extremely excited when I realized the Kinder idea is perfectly in line with my own future goals and I could definitely see myself bringing this project to life. The excitement, of course, led to long nights hacking away - this here would be much better written if I had managed to get a couple of extra hours of sleep!
I'm proud of where we ended up and how much we learned on the way - and I truly believe in this mission.
We can help the grandma needing a plumbing catastrophe in the middle of the night. We can help the kids with not the right study supplies to do better in school. We can solve the issues of food and household products going to waste by arranging donations. We can make that girl's dream of owning a laptop so she could learn programming come true. We can help the local hackerspace to give more back to the community.
And have fun doing it while competing against our friends.
Future
I really want to figure out what people need to work together as efficiently as possible and become the best versions of themselves - and build software to automate the parts of human communication we're not as efficient at.
Making Kinder come true and continuing on the project is a wonderful way of studying what motivates people to contribute and give back to the community - and on the other side, figuring out what makes people reluctant to ask for help.
Eventually, I want to keep adding on to this, building on top of the existing user base. This solution could easily include efficient sharing of vehicles, tools, and other supplies, implement a location-based social network, serve as a common platform for sharing news, ideas and knowledge, and increase transparency and participation by including local voting systems.
But figuring that out will probably take decades. So for now, let's focus on the small things we can do right now, and push the snowball off the hill while making it easier for people to work through the aftermath of a global pandemic! <3
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