Inspiration
I remember receiving a HOA potluck invitation through a paper flyer attached to my door that was for a month in advance. As with most papers, it was stuck onto the refrigerator and forgotten about it until the day of the event, with nothing prepared. In a world with so much digital assistance we thought an social media app to encourage and make organizing and participating in social events would be beneficial to society.
What it does
Locates events from a certain distance radius from the user's home and makes an easier way to create and join social events.
How we built it
We created a web application using Django as a backend framework, PostgreSQL as our database, and Bootstrap as a frontend framework. We attempted creating a secure login system but due to time and technical constraints we went with a simpler solution. We planned out and created various tables to divide our data in the database, and had to modify and adapt those as we worked. We encountered various technical challenges, and learned as we worked our way through them. We divided the work amongst ourselves by frontend, backend, and database development.
Challenges we ran into
Since this was Yash and I's (Jacob) first hackathon, our teammates Sriram and Johnny had to teach us a lot while also doing their own work. Additionally, the open ended prompt gave us trouble at first to decide on a project to create. Johnny and Sriram ran into various technical challenges. One notable one was trying to create a secure user authentication system. They encountered countless errors, and had to modify a lot and adapt as we went.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We are proud that were able to create a functional website within 24 hours that encourages civic participation in the community and has potential to become a bigger application.
What we learned
We learned how to communicate effectively to streamline the brainstorming process. We also learned how to design and create a relational database model using PostgreSQL, effectively integrate PostgreSQL with Django, and display it in the frontend with bootstrap. We learned how to compartmentalize and distribute the tasks and how to save enough time at the end for integration and testing.
What's next for Nearby
We would need to complete the pages which we couldn't complete due to time and technical constraints. Those pages include the login page, user profile page, and a more robust comment section. In addition to a more sophisticated authentication system, a better layout and more thorough testing throughout the application would have been great if time permitted. In addition, we would like to expand this to a mobile app to make it more accessible.
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