Inspiration
We came to the Vatican and were challenged to use our technical skills to tackle the issue of social inclusion. We spent an evening brainstorming several ideas - everything from enhanced wheelchairs to an armband that can detect sudden medical situations. We eventually decided that impacting homeless people trying to re-establish their solid footing in society was something that we were both passionate about and confident enough in our abilities to create a real change agent.
What it does
The app uses blockchain technology to establish a persistent digital identity a user can carry with them. Our app leverages this new identity to motivate users to participate in self-improvement programs to help them reclaim their place in society - everything from spurring job applications to presenting opportunities for community meetups. Our first client product runs on iOS, but the backend is flexible enough to support other clients in the future.
How we built it
Given the very broad range of skills that our team had, we divided ourselves in small groups: one building frontend iOS application, one building the back-end API that will be the interface between
Challenges we ran into
No members of the group had any prior experience with working with blockchain technology and it is such a vast and complicated technology that it took us most of the time of the Hackaton to figure out how to make it work and how to use it to our advantage. It being such a new technology, moreover, meant that not even mentors had a lot of experience with the project; this meant that we had to closely work with them making it a learning experience for both them and us.
Accomplishments that we are proud of
We laid down a very hard road for us to walk in these 24 hours and we are really proud that we ended up with something that is very close to what we imagined when we had our first idea of the app. Also solving more and less hard problems on the way brought us closer not only as "colleagues" but also as people.
What we learned
As already stated nobody in the team had any experience with Blockchain other than having heard and/or read about it on the internet. Being able to build something on top of this groundbreaking techonology made use even more aware of how it could be disruptive for both the web and the society we know of.
What's next for VHacks-Galileo
Refine what we managed to create in these 24 hours and continue building all the features that we imagined for the platform hopefully providing a new way for homeless people to live the life they deserve into a welcoming and productive society for the betterment of all of us.
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