The Hackathon Experience: More Than Just Code

Introduction: The Spark

I was at the AI connect meetup with the title Data Science for Social Good. Came to know how college students and professionals can contribute to the social good. When they shared about the hackathon. Like a kid in a candy store, I was excited to join the hackathon. I had been looking for a way to give back to the community and this was the perfect opportunity.

The Team: A Symphony of Skills

Before the hackathon

As soon as I signed up for the hackathon, I started looking for a team from the participant list.

Based on what I understood from the AI connect meetup, I was in the mindset of having a team with necessary skills. I have architectural, DevOps and design thinking skills that can break down the problem into actionable items for each team member. But I don’t want to sign up to be a developer, especially as a front-end developer. So I was looking for

  • frontend developer (UI/UX is important for the demo)
  • backend developer (with API design skills),
  • data scientist (in case we get large dataset, we need to analyze the data and build a model to predict)
  • product owner / scrum master (who can’t code but can focus on team building, passionate to solve problem and importantly take us towards deliverable required).
  • a presenter (who has powerpoint skills and can present the solution to the judges).

Even though I connected with a few participants, I wasn’t able to form a team but made a few friends who were open to discuss and decide at the Mixer.

At the hackathon Mixer

After the welcome speech, we started the mixer to find a team. It was recommended to find a team with 4-6 members.

Initially I found a team with smart and young developers. In the middle of forming a team, I went to look for a product owner/scrum master who can identify smaller scope that is achivable and manage coordination when friction occurs. By the time I come around, this team had more members. Everyone loves doers.

I restarted looking for a team where I could be an architect, DevOps engineer, or at worst case, a backend developer. As I approached and introduced myself by telling them who I am and what I can do, they were more than happy to have me as part of the team.

Team formed and my teammates are

- Anthony Chapman: Frontend developer
- Lucas Wyman: CEO type with marketing skills, lots of energy, passion to solve problems, and strong presentation skills
- Matthew Lucas: Backend developer
- Don Huovinen: Product owner type; skilled in low-code/no-code development
- Danny Logsdon: CEO type with expertise in generating backend code using .NET
- and myself (Mahendran Mookkiah): Architect, AWS DevOps

As teams were seated, there were a few members looking for a team. At the stage, they were asked to share their skills and what they could do. As soon as Bill Davis shared that he is a PowerBI expert, Danny raised his hand to welcome Bill to the team. I sensed Danny’s people skills and his supportive, “not leaving anyone behind” mindset.

Excited to see the problem cases.

The Problem Cases

We had three problem cases to solve. This is not the full case details. The section I understand.

Case 1: Measuring Non-Electoral Civic Engagement

To fill the gap between civic engagement and electoral engagement. Research the given dataset and design a method, tool, or platform to measure non-electoral civic engagement in Duval County. Use creative data sourcing to answer: “In what ways and how many North Floridians are engaging in civic life outside of voting?”

Case 2: Estimating the Local Self-Sufficiency Standard

Develop a Self-Sufficiency standard framework that helps gather data that will allow the community to better estimate the true cost of self-sufficiency in Duval County. This helps incoming residents find the region within our county that suits their needs and budget. This also helps local leaders make funding decisions, policy development, and design regional development programs to improve the community.

Case 3: Community Connections

The goal is to foster collaboration between non-profits, local organizations and volunteers/donations to maximize resource allocation. We need a platform to bring the donating people and organization to list their donations. Reduce the friction in delivering the donations to the people who is looking for it. Increase the transparency of how a donation reaches who and when so that the donors trust the platform and give more.

This is the case we have chosen to implement.

The Obstacles: Pushing Boundaries

As we started digesting “Community Connections” problem, our team started seeing the complexity and large scope of this project. This includes…

  • Onboarding non-profit and organizations
  • Helping donor’s tax document needs
  • How to categorize the donation types (good, service, volunteer hours, money etc.,)
  • How to outreach/attract people who needs
  • What do we collect from users and how to validate?
  • How do we match donations and needs?
  • Should we build a blockchain method to track donations and their delivery until they reach the needy person?

The Breakthrough: From Idea to Impact

In order to build a working demo in 48 hours, we had to find a smaller and impactful idea. We decided to focus on organizations as customers and bring them a screen to show opportunities to donate. We also wanted to give every one of our team members the opportunity to contribute with their existing skills or something quick to learn. We were able to take on these tasks:

  • Build UI to onboard organizations
  • Allow the organization to login
  • Scrape instagram for needs based on hashtags
  • Build a chatbot to talk in natural language with a no-code platform
  • Design a schema that includes needs with description, organization, services, and donations with description
  • Reach out to local non-profits to discover go-to-market strategy and develop an impactful presentation

By Saturday evening at 3 PM (~24 hours), we had a clear idea of everyone’s task and were able to dream about putting it all together and presenting.

Gratitude: The Village Behind the Vision

Thank everyone involved. This is your chance to show appreciation.

  • The Team: The team’s support and ability to adapt to change helped a lot for our team’s success.
  • The Organizers & Mentors: Thanks to Jen, Chris, Pete and the team behind them.
  • The Sponsors & Supporters: Thanks to iR for giving us space to work, AnuVision for the space to present the demo, AWS for providing a platform, and every sponsor.

The Victory: 2nd Place and Giving Back

We were thrilled to win 2nd place in the hackathon! This recognition validated our team’s hard work and the impact potential of our Community Connections platform.

As a team, we decided to donate a portion of our winnings to Mission House, a local Jacksonville Beach non-profit that empowers and compassionately supports neighbors in need. Their mission of helping people achieve stable, healthy, and self-sufficient lives aligns perfectly with our hackathon’s goal of fostering community connections and resource allocation.

This donation represents our commitment to not just building solutions during the hackathon, but continuing to support the community we’re trying to help.

Conclusion: Beyond the Hackathon

Hackathons are for quickly prototyping a challenge with technical experts. We were proud to contribute. The success is in capturing the thoughts of every team which tackles this problem case and brainstorming to build a product. We’re happy to hear this project will continue beyond the hackathon to create impact in the community.