Sporadi.club

Easily decide on a place to eat, regardless of group size

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Inspiration

Every day a bunch of us goes out for lunch. Every day we start walking and only then start debating about the destination. You know how it works - most people don't really have a place in mind, other don't really care, and others can choose only by elimination... Once the pattern emerged - we decided to solve it the only way we know :)

What it does

Sporadi.club generates 4 lunch options around a certain location (current or custom), and starts a poll where anyone with the link can vote.
When the poll expires - lunch is no longer a mystery.
Simple, seamless, easy.

How we built it

  • Backend - Python/Django with a simple API to create a poll, get details and participate.
    • All apps are just wrappers for the backend functionality.
  • Web App - Angular.js
  • iOS - Objective-C
  • Slack BOT - Python

We're also using FourSquare, Google-Maps and Uber APIs throughout the product.

Challenges we ran into

The product is pretty straight-forward.
The problem it solves is social and not technical/computational.

Most of our challenges revolved not being experienced with front-end/JS/Angular and not having a designer. There's a lot to be done on the "product" front (UX).

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • We're still friends :) (but seriously - great team work)
  • Despite the lack of front-end experience and a designer in the team we've built a decent looking App.
  • In a short period of time we've built a ready-to-use product, with several clients (already deployed).
  • We're super proud of our Slack-bot too :)

What we learned

  • A lot of the logistics can be cleared ahead of the Hackathon (setting up domain, repository, product spec.)
  • Working with tools we're not experienced with will probably throw us off our schedule
  • Hackathons are super-fun and beneficial all-around
  • Excellent technical skills are somewhat secondary to: team, communication, experience and common sense :)

What's next for Sporadi.club

Sporadi.club is perferct for every group of people trying to decide on an activity to do together:

  • Where to eat
  • What to watch
  • What to see (when traveling)
  • Where to go hiking
  • Which fun activity to do
  • And many more!

Among the ideas and concepts:

  • User registration/identity
  • User reputation
  • Veto
  • "Sponsored" result(s)
  • Manual override
  • Machine learning stuff (we're getting valuable info about people's preferences and habits)
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