HackConnect

HackConnect is a social network for hackathons that connects participants through challenges, fostering collaboration, networking, and innovation.

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🚀 Inspiration

Hack Connect was born from our experience attending multiple hackathons. While it was easy to meet people during the event, those connections often faded once it ended. We wanted to build a platform that keeps the fun and the social energy going during the hackathon itself — encouraging people to connect, collaborate, and have a good time while hacking.

 💡 What it does

Hack Connect is a fun and interactive social platform designed specifically for hackathon participants. It allows users to:

  • 🎯 Complete challenges to earn points and engage with the community.
  • 📊 View a scoreboard to see how others are doing.
  • 🧑‍🎨 Generate funny avatars from selfies using a Stable Diffusion model with ControlNet.
  • 🤖 Create and share projects with AI-generated names using Gemini AI.
  • 🌍 Connect with people who share similar hobbies, countries, or favorite programming languages.

The platform is meant to be used during the hackathon, as a way to break the ice, collaborate informally, and make the event even more engaging.

🛠️ How we built it

We developed Hack Connect as a web application composed of several integrated services:

  • ⚙️ FastAPI for the backend REST API.
  • 🐘 PostgreSQL for persistent user, challenge, and project data.
  • 🗂️ MinIO for storing user profile images.
  • 🧠 MLServer hosting a Stable Diffusion + ControlNet model for avatar generation.
  • 🧪 Gemini AI API for generating creative project names.
  • 🐳 Docker & Docker Compose to containerize and orchestrate all services for development and deployment.

🚧 Challenges we ran into

  • Integrating all services (ML models, storage, backend, and frontend) into a single cohesive platform under tight time constraints.
  • Implementing avatar generation and ensuring it worked end-to-end, including preprocessing photos and returning the result (currently, generation works but frontend display is pending).
  • Balancing ambitious features with limited time — we had to prioritize carefully.

🏆 Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • Built a fully functional backend with complete CRUD operations supporting all frontend needs.
  • Deployed a modular and scalable architecture using Docker, enabling easy development and testing.
  • Successfully integrated AI features like avatar generation and project name generation.
  • Designed a points-based challenge system and scoreboard to keep users motivated.
  • Created a cohesive, fun platform tailored to the hackathon experience.

📚 What we learned

  • FastAPI and RESTful API design under pressure.
  • How to use Docker to manage a multi-service architecture.
  • Integrating AI services (Stable Diffusion, Gemini) into real applications.
  • Efficient team collaboration and product scope management during a hackathon.

🔮 What's next for Hack Connect

  • Fix frontend integration of avatar generation so users can view their results in-app.
  • Finish the GitHub integration to automatically detect users' programming languages from their repos.
  • Improve challenge tracking so users can view their completed challenges.
  • Expand the challenge system and social interactions to increase engagement.
  • Improve the UI/UX to make it even more fun and accessible for new users.

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