On the weekend of 24-26 April, Qubiz took part in the greatest pan-European Hackathon in history with 2 teams and 2 promising project ideas.The EUvsVirus Hackathon was hosted by The European Comission, led by the European Innovation Council and in close collaboration with the EU member states. Obviously, the aim of this hackathon was to discover "innovative solutions for coronavirus-related challenges".Oh, and one important thing: the whole event took place online, from organisers' and participants' kitchens and living rooms! Even so, over 20,900 people from across the EU and beyond took part, with 2,150 solutions submitted at the end, making it one of the biggest hackathons in history.The two Qubiz-infused teams that participated numbered no less than 14 colleagues + NGO volunteers. Congrats to all for your involvement!So let's see the projects:
One project was Care@Home, a speech interaction-based mobile application that helps vulnerable categories reach for basic necessities without leaving home: basic supplies, medical care, social/psychological support. Once a request is made, it is dispatched to a number of local volunteers or organisations (providers) that have signed up.
To improve the accessibility aspects of the app, interactions are intended to be primarily done through natural language, which is parsed down to keywords and commands resulting in actions. See how it looks in action:[embed width=729 height=410]https://youtu.be/snZWlj6ursA[/embed]
The idea for Volunteero came up from the discussions we had with representatives of several local NGOs, who during the hackathon acted as product owners. The application basically helps NGOs get in contact with, coordinate, and "share" volunteers, thus providing more effective ways of helping people in need in their communities.
Volunteero is designed to be highly secure, scalable and decentralised, its code being open source (it's built using .NET technologies). This way, Volunteero can be used in any community, and adapted based on its needs. Further details in the video in which Mihai explains how it works:[embed width=729 height=410]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5ENK8or0as[/embed]Although the project was started during the Hackathon, we continue building it and hope to launch it very soon!