Background

Back in early 2019 or late 2018, I applied to Stanford University’s hackathon: “Treehacks” and I was accepted! I think this was because of my shared desire with the organizers of Treehacks, to make something for the greater good. Airfare was paid for, and I excitedly packed my bags to go to San Jose.

The First Day

I reached out to other people looking for transportation from San Jose to Stanford and arrived early enough to burn some time traveling around the city. I walked around and took the trains to visit places like downtown, and Japan-town slightly north. It was very exciting being in Silicon Valley for the first time. Looking at a map, there were all sorts of impressive companies scattered around. Finally, I met up with the two other people I would travel with, and we took an Uber up to Stanford.

Upon arrival, it was pretty easy to be overwhelmed, not only was the campus huge and beautiful, but the venue where the hackathon would be staged was packed with people, from all around California and the US.

The First Day would primarily focus around choosing which “Vertical” we wanted to work on. The choices were “Safety”, “Health”, and “Awareness”. I split up from my carpool buddies and went on to meet new people. Hackathons have a unique vibe. No one really knows anyone, and everyone seemed open to talk, and get to know one another. I met some incredible people, from all sorts of prestigious universities, and immediately became friends with them. Furthermore, a wide variety of companies had set up shop around the edges of the building we were working in, and had resources and swag for us.

Then came the time to form groups. I knew that I was not as interested in the “Safety” or “Health” verticals, and that my previous work experience lent itself more toward the “Awareness” vertical. It was then where I started conceptualizing an idea that I had been mulling over for a while. I then pitched my idea and spoke with other people interested in Awareness, and formed a group around the idea I had.

The Idea

I wanted to help people, who were frustrated about all the different things that there were to be frustrated about. The idea was to present a series of actionable steps that people could take to fight for the things they were passionate about. Furthermore, we could ‘game-ify’ the process, and give people rewards for completing challenges. The idea was for people to “pick a fight”, and then go on to know exactly they should to to fight for that cause.

We centered our “fights” around the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and would work from there. The MVP would center around “Climate Change”, giving a series of gamified steps to most effectively fight against climate change as an individual.

The Build Process

I found myself separating the tasks for the other group members. Similar to past projects, we split up into a frontend and a backend team. I was responsible for creating a functioning angular framework, implementing a google cloud backend, and assisting the front-end team with any trouble they had. This was a heck of a sprint, and over the next 36 hours, we would find ourselves facing all sorts of difficulty. We made sure to take advantage of the excellent opportunities and activities that were available to us, such as juggling, learning about new open source projects, or simply eating delicious food.

Thankfully my team members were amazing, and we worked through any challenges we had, to deliver a great proof-of-concept.

The Final Day

After 36 hours of hacking, and struggling with learning all sorts of new aspects of the Angular framework, we were exhausted. It was, however, time to pitch our product. So we set up, and spent the next 3 hours showing our results to all sorts of judges, and speaking to some of the other impressive teams. We were convinced that we weren't going to win anything, but we were happy to be there and have worked with one another. When the time came for the awards, we were almost delirious from lack of sleep, one of my other team members even fell asleep. So when our name came up for an award, we were shocked. We had gotten 2nd place in the "Best App for Civic Action" category.

I had been in touch with my former carpool friends, and it had turned out they had both won awards as well! It was a Sunday afternoon, and I had to fly home for school the next day. But I would always be thankful to the Stanford hackathon team for putting together such an excellent and fun event. I am still friends with many of the people I met there to this day.

The Rough Website (In Progress)

The site still needs work, but I went through the effort of hosting it, because despite the holes in the navigation, and somewhat inconsistent CSS, the idea could shine through.

I still work on it from time to time, just because I do believe in the legitimacy of the idea, and hope to start from scratch and improve on the foundation we laid down in those 36 hours.

Please click on the “Climate Action” page to see an idea of the challenges.