The top three winners were announced on Monday in the Physically Apart, Virtually Connected hackathon hosted on Devpost. The winners - Quentin Plomteux, Han Wei Tan; and Kevin Malover - received a total of $4,500 in prize money for creating solutions that can virtually connect people even as they keep socially distant. Summaries of the winning submissions can be found below.
The competition, hosted on leading hackathon platform, Devpost, ran from June 22 - August 3, 2020 and called for participants to use Velo to create an online solution or web application that “creates connections” and “will virtually connect individuals or groups who can help, support or benefit each other, given the many physical restrictions we face in the offline world.”
The competition received 25 submissions that aimed to solve a number of problems including solutions for matching people with open source projects that need their help, connecting nonprofits, and an online education platform. The contest was judged by three members of the Velo team: Joshua Alphonse - Developer Advocate; Mor Gilad - Lead Software Engineer; and Jacob Kimchi - Head of Product. The judges evaluated each submission for innovation and overall creativity, use of Velo, and user experience.
Kimchi commented on the submissions, saying: “It was exciting and encouraging to see both the creativity and passion that people brought to this challenge in order to create helpful solutions for those around them during the pandemic. We saw a lot of great projects in this hackathon and many of them really stood out on all three criteria that we were judging, including of course the winning submissions. We've seen time and again how people use Velo for the purpose of building something of value online. This hackathon was more evidence for us of the amazing things that can be built, quickly, with Velo by Wix. We can't wait to see even more from our users.”
First Place Winner: Quentin Plomteux - Virtual Food Bank
From the submission:
“This solution moves food bank operations online in order to protect workers, volunteers and beneficiaries. This allows FB to remain open while facing increasing demand and new safety regulation.
It uses Wix booking to settle online appointments (via Wix's zoom integration) During the appointment, the social worker assesses the applicant situation (family, income) and creates an account for the beneficiary. Once the account is created, the beneficiary will receive a fixed amount of money (as a coupon) each week. This coupon can be used to shop online. If the beneficiary runs out of money, he can still purchase food via online payment or pay cash at delivery. Only the remaining cost will be charged.”
Second Place: Han Wei Tan - Human to Human
From the submission:
“I built the Human to Human project as a website that:
Allows certified psychologists, psychotherapists, and mindfulness coaches to register as our virtual therapists or lifestyle coaches.
Enables users to sign up for therapy sessions and mindfulness sessions online.
Automatically creates a Zoom meeting schedule, notifies web contributors (virtual therapists and lifestyle coaches) and users, and reminds both parties when a session is booked by the user.
Allows new users to book the first two sessions for free (1 therapy session and 1 mindfulness session).
Sells multiple session packages at affordable prices.”
Third Place: Kevin Malover - My Yearbook Pages
From the submission:
“Social distancing and remote learning shouldn't stop you from getting your yearbook signed. Capture more memories than ever by inviting friends and family to sign your yearbook online!”
“Students can invite friends and family to sign their yearbooks online by going to a personal page. Their guests can upload pictures along with their messages to the students page. Students can choose from creative designs to save the pages digitally and print them to save along with their real yearbooks. Members can search for other members to sign yearbooks and share their pages.”
You can see all of the submissions and more about the winners on Devpost. Additionally, you can sign-up for Velo today and start building your own projects.
