PPMK Connect

Inspiration

As a first-year student in Korea, we observed how easy it was for students to stay in their own bubble. Many of us, particularly introverts, struggle to demonstrate our talents or meet others who share our interests.

Some students wanted to spend their leisure time but had no one to do it with. Others, did not get adequate exposure to crucial information about PPMK groups, organizations, or activities outside of what was communicated in the Kakao batch.

This gap led us to establish PPMK Connect, a website where students can find jobs, participate in meetups, and actually feel like they are a part of the community.

What it does

Connects students through meetups - lets students create or join gatherings based on shared interests.
Showcases clubs and societies - a central hub to discover PPMK communities beyond just Kakao batch groups.
Encourages time well-spent - enables students who want to explore, learn, or hang out to find companions.
Builds community bonds - transforms isolated student bubbles into networks of collaboration and friendship.
Centralizes important information - announcements, events, and updates all in one accessible place.

How we built it

Frontend: React + TailwindCSS for a clean and responsive interface. Backend: Supabase for authentication, database, and real-time sync. Features:

get to know PPMK organization
Meetup creation and joining system
Community spaces for clubs and societies
Info hub for first-year students (guides, announcements, FAQs)

Challenges we ran into

Smooth integration issues - ensuring AI features worked seamlessly with the backend demanded extra effort and debugging.
Defining the scope - the vision was broad (meetups, info hub, clubs, community), so narrowing it down to a realistic MVP was hard and needed to match to the hackathon theme.
Feature overload - too many “good ideas” making the process of best features selection hard.
Information access - a lot of important club/society details were scattered or word-of-mouth only.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Created a Functional Meetup Platform - students can now create, discover, and join meetups based on shared interests.
Developed a Collaborative Team Workflow - learned to balance roles, communicate effectively, and deliver a complete project as a team.

What we learned

Tech isn’t everything - the second hardest after coding is to to understand the students' need in making this project meaningful
AI (ChatandBuild) requires care - prompting will not give the right code, we need to understand the code to ensure the functionality is aligned with the goal of the project.
Communication between teammates - regular updates and honest feedback helped reduce misunderstandings.

What's next for PPMK Connect

Event Recommendation System - using AI to use AI to suggest meetups, clubs, or activities tailored to each student’s preferences.
Expand Community Features - adding interest-based groups, discussion boards, and mentorship programs to foster deeper connections.