Oppen: The Hackathon Aggregator

Inspiration

Oppen was born out of frustration. As students at IIIT-B, we found ourselves constantly jumping between Devpost, Unstop, and random university pages, often missing key deadlines. We realized the world didn't need another hackathon platform; it needed a clean, unified discovery engine. Our goal was to strip away the noise and build a minimalist tool that lets developers spend less time searching and more time building.

What it does

Oppen is a comprehensive directory for developer events. Our engine:

Aggregates from 20+ sources: We scrape everything from major players like Devpost and MLH to specialized academic and conference listings.
Unified Interface: All events are normalized into a single, clean layout.
Smart Filtering: Users can filter by mode (Online/Offline/Hybrid), registration status, team requirements, and specific technology tags.
Zero Friction: No accounts, no logins—just instant access to the world's best hackathons. ## How we built it We chose a "lean and fast" architecture:
Python Backend: A modular scraping system built on a custom BaseScraper class, utilizing requests, BeautifulSoup, and cloudscraper for resilience.
Static Speed: Data is stored in a versioned hackathons.json, allowing the frontend to load instantly without a heavy database backend.
Vanilla Frontend: Built with pure HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. We avoided frameworks to keep the site lightweight and the design unique.
Modern Aesthetics: A premium "Dark Mode" interface focusing on typography and clarity, recently simplified to emphasize content over decoration. ## Challenges we ran into
Anti-Scraping Measures: Many platforms use Cloudflare or custom bot detection. We had to implement sophisticated session handling and header rotation to maintain uptime.
Data Normalization: Reconciling inconsistent date formats and event details from dozens of varying HTML structures was a major technical hurdle.
Deduplication: When an event is cross-posted on multiple platforms, our logic identifies and merges duplicates to keep the feed clean. ## Accomplishments that we're proud of
Robust Scraper Mesh: Successfully orchestrating 20+ independent scrapers into a reliable data pipeline.
IIIT-B Roots: Building this as a team of students (Sophomores and Freshmen) to solve a problem for our own community.
Performance: Achieving a sub-second "Time to Interactive" despite handling a massive dataset of global events. ## What we learned
Philosophy of the "Builder": Building with vanilla technologies taught us the value of architectural simplicity and the power of direct DOM manipulation.
Data Integrity: We learned that in an aggregator, the quality of your normalization logic is just as important as the quantity of your data. ## What's next for Oppen
Calendar Synchronization: One-click "Add to Calendar" for Google and Outlook.
AI-Powered Matching: Using lightweight NLP to suggest hackathons based on a user's previous interests and tech stack.
Expanded Global Reach: Integrating more niche regional hackathons from Europe and Asia.