Connect Two

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Inspiration

Connect Two was inspired by the need for our sense of belonging. We cherish our community and participate actively there. But what would happen if we moved outside of the area? Does this mean we can no longer feel at home?

The name of the project itself comes from the classic board game "Connect 4". It's also represented in our logo, which has two circles. This symbolizes our mission to "Connect 2" people.

What it does

This app has several features to help bring back that sense of community. First is our threads or post system. Users can see conversations happening from near their area. This fosters their sense of community and empowers them.

Also, users are divided into two categories which are mentees and mentors. Our app has a system to match mentees and mentors so that they can feel at home no matter where they are. In addition to that, mentors will teach their mentees new languages to demolish the language barrier. We believe that this system not only connects people but also educates them on valuable skills such as language.

How we built it

For the back end, it was built using Django REST Framework and Next.js for the front end. Besides that, we also use Mapbox and a handful of APIs to make everything work as intended. The back end was then deployed to Railway + PostgreSQL and Vercel for the front end.

Challenges we ran into

There are only two of us, one member handling the back end and the other for the front end. We find that we have to do non-stop coding without much break. Also, it was our first time working together on a single project together and also working with new geolocation libraries.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The app looks clean, and the features work as intended. Successfully working with geolocation data is also a big win in our books.

What we learned

We learned that defining a solid idea is more important than developing it immediately. In this hackathon, we spent more time designing the systems and documenting it first before even thinking of writing a single line of code.

What's next for Connect Two

Pins that are created should be actively verified by a moderator to prevent inappropriate statements. We could also add more features, such as an in-house chat system so users could directly contact through the app.