Inspiration
As I was sitting at the Michigan airport I wondered how will I meet other participants. I was uncertain of how to find them or to where to contact them. Posts for carpooling and meeting up in different parts of the world which couldn't be realized by the Facebook event page finally made me realize the need for this app.
What it does
Takes registrations of users. Tells them the positions of the closest fellow participants. Gives organizers the ability to find the position of their users and help them come to the event venue easily.
How we built it
Lots of googling. All teammates learnt coding from scratch. We would screen multiple tutorials and try to figure out the best way to implement our commands. We would look at great pieces of code and try to imitate those in ours. We were also constantly aware of keeping an impeccable design on top of everything.
Challenges we ran into
We just couldn't set up a database. Our back-end developing did not work out. We tried mySQL servers with PHP, Node.js. Then, we went for completely insecure array and txt file storage with jQuery. Finally, we tried implementing Facebook API to link with Facebook accounts. In the end for various reasons, none of them worked out.
Moreover we tried learning iOS and android app development originally but due to the problematic net connection that didn't work out as well. After gaining a working understanding of Swift and Java, we begrudgingly agreed to shifting our app to a web based platform.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Being able to finish with a product that we are proud of. Failing at doing so many things that we eventually lost count.
All team members have come for their first hackathon. We have relatively nil experience in developing in general. We held no expectations with MHacks, and only looked at it as an opportunity for learning. After spending hours upon hours just failing at all our pursuits we didn't feel disheartened but, rather, energized and aggressively explored all strategies. Along with the silly jokes, random anecdotes and coding doubts we could all agree that collectively our first hackathon will be the most memorable.
What we learned
We got a comprehensive understanding of front-end development. By failing multiple times through a variety of methods, our knowledge regarding backend and the myriad of possible problems grew expansively. This ensures that our performance in our next hackathon will surely be much better.
What's next for TravNet
We are planning to flesh out the backend on our own. We are going to integrate this website with Uber/Lyft API as well as the Facebook API, as we originally imagined. We want people to move together safely in dangerous neighbourhoods. We also want to foster a spirit of friendship amongst travelers.
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