MunichMeet

Scan a QR Code to instantly connect!
Get rich in MingaPoints!
Inspect the dynamically added events and enroll!
Use the Map to find events near you!
Quick Scan -> Ching Ching -> more Minga Coins
Use the 3D-Map to be cool!
Enroll on mobile or laptop, whatever you prefer!

Inspiration

Having had many international and exchange experiences, we all knew how important, but also often hard, it is to get to know new people when not having a social circle already established. Doesn't matter if you're new to the place or old friendships just faded away through time. That's why after some short time of discussion, we decided we wanted to tackle the challenge of the City of Munich, making a cool tool and hopefully fighting against loneliness in the process by gamification.

What it does

While there are certainly many people eager to meet new interesting faces and build new friendships, there are sadly much less who are willing and daring to organize it themselves. We wish to lower this barrier by putting the organization and planning in an algorithms hand, making meeting new people more about the people themselves than about the circumstances. To make this approachable we decided for a map interface, like Pokemon Go. This helps takes some of the preassure away of not knowing what to expect from an event by visualizing it beforehand and it gives you fun little side quests. Plus, you'll always know, when someone is also looking for new company, by finding them on the map, making sure that both parties are actually interested.

How we built it

As we want this to be used on the fly, we first and foremost focused on the mobile responsiveness of the tool. While doing this, we made sure to clearly separate the frontend (NextJS + Tailwind) and backend (Flask and Python) and keeping a clean API for connecting them for communication. Finally, we deployed it on a webserver for public usage, from everywhere, for everyone!

Challenges we ran into

With such a big problem to face, one of our biggest concerns was keeping the scope realistic. We had many ideas and just kept coming up with new ones. When we finally settled what to focus on (more than 5 hours later), the next challenge was creating a good way for all of our technologies to communicate, making sure all datatypes could move platforms smoothly and all needed data was available. Our third and final challenge was about how to keep the users engaged. For it to be truly helping the community, people would have to want to use it. For this we added small and fun systems like the "MingaCoins" and easy methods for making new contacts with the QR-Code features. Scan - Ding - new Friend!

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We combined multiple technologies, such as QR code for enabling to connect with people and maintain relationships in a fast and fun manner, real-time location tracking of our users for enriching our map functionality. The interaction with real services through APIs to fine tune the event generation algorithm, e.g. weather forecast APIs to decide which events would best fit which date / season. You can already enroll for many different events on the map itself, like public get togethers in bars, small hikes or "beach" days at the Isar when the weather allows it!

What we learned

We strongly learned to adapt and program dynamically in a team, but also got a little inside on how to address growing and important matters in the sense of a big city planner. Not to forget, we also learned how to survive on 2h of sleep and that every joke gets a bit funnier during that.

What's next for MunichMeet

Be the next Pokemon Go 😉 We also want to find a way to redeem the MingaCoins for public services in Munich, like zoo-, museum- or opera tickets. Other than that, the generating of the events could still be improved and we also talked about adding special events for different seasons, like meetings at Weihnachtsmärkten during Christmas and more.