How we helped to create the biggest hackathon of all time
#WirVsVirus
#WirVsVirus — our part in the biggest hackathon of all time🏆
48 hours — 42 000 (forty-two thousand!) people. On 20 March 2020, WirVsVirus, the biggest hackathon in world history, began. Our goal and that of almost two thousand other teams was to find solutions for the current Covid-19 crisis.
This article describes the making of our project www.smallbusinesshero.de, a platform to get in touch with local stores in your neighborhood, so you can support them during the Covid-19 crisis and beyond.
“The stores were packed with products and the store owners were desperate.”
On Thursday, within a few hours only, about forty people gathered in our company chat. We had a lot of ideas and somehow it was clear early on that we would build a website or application for the hackathon. Maybe an app to share information or to raise awareness for the population.
The big question was: How could we create social impact and value — just by building software?
Obvious first ideas were mostly about “how to avoid social contacts” and “how to stop the spread”. But the hackathon’s challenge was explicitly not limited to preventing the crisis, but also about solving the challenges that it creates in our society.
At this point, Claudia joined the chat. She told us about an experience she had two days ago: “I went to two stores on Tuesday to buy some last things before they had to close yesterday. They were full of products and the store owners were desperate.” she told us: “They are expecting to go bankrupt if this lasts for longer than maybe three weeks. One was even expecting a thousand euro delivery which she had ordered a long time ago and couldn’t be cancelled.”
A real problem — a feasible solution. That was enough to convince most of us.
“It was like a hive of bees.”
On Friday 6pm, things got off to a chaotic start. Everybody was getting started and tried to get access to Slack, the hackathon’s main communication platform. However, this already turned out to be a technical challenge: The WirVsVirus organization team never expected to have so many participants that even Slack was brought to its knees. They contacted Slack’s CEO Steward Butterfield who confirmed that “adding 40,000 all at once to a single instance seems like … a bad idea :)”. He was able to help though and brought Slack back to live.
The developers of our team swiftly set up the technical project structure as well as a website so that we could start right away. Within the first 24 hours, we managed to come up with a technical solution to the problem, create a first mockup and connect to other teams via social media.
Something happened which we had not expected: so many people were willing to help and joined the project — and some of them are still actively involved, even after the hackathon!
Our solution: Small Business Hero
Our vision was (and is!) to support local businesses by bringing them online easily and conveniently, so their customers can get in touch with them. In these times of distancing we want to bring the neighborhood closer together by bridging the gap between owner and customers — in a simple way. Most small stores, also the ones from your own neighborhood, have no other way to survive the Covid-19 quarantine.
So on Sunday, after two exhausting and exciting days, “Small Business Hero” went live. A limited version with only basic functionality, sure. But it was live and it even included the profiles of three real stores.
We are focusing on small retailers from the neighbourhood and especially on the relationship between them and their customers. We have spoken to store owners and realized that oftentimes, they have neither the technical knowledge to set up an online store, nor the resources to do so. With our platform we want to help them to stay in business — some stores are already online and available on our website! Small Business Hero is completely free and we aim to keep it that way.
By the time you are reading this article, it is already possible to enter any neighbourhood, search for stores in your neighborhood and browse them. If you like something, just contact the owner and order from them!
What a surprise!
Exactly one week later, almost the whole team has committed to develop the idea further. Ever since the hackathon weekend, we had been constantly working on improving our platform. We did not even remember that there would be a formal announcement of the winners the day after.
Until Monday, when we received an email: We won the contest. Small Business Hero had been chosen from over 1400 projects: We were one of the 20 winning teams!
One hour later, Claudia was already live on air (or better, on YouTube), where she explained about our project and the idea behind it to the whole hackathon community.
What an incredible journey!
What are the next steps?
We decided to keep going as a team to provide a valuable service to the small shops in your and our own neighbourhoods. Thanks to the German federal chancellery (Bundeskanzleramt) we are able to do so with their support!
The first thing we want to do is make it easier for store owners to register with us. To achieve this, continued motivation and commitment is crucial. We hope that we can work collaboratively with other teams that have a similar vision. Additionally, we very much appreciate any additional help offered to us!
To extend our reach, we appreciate everyone’s support to get more attention on social media. This way, we can increase in value by bringing together as many store owners and customers as possible.
Finally, we would like to thank you. We only came this far because we were surrounded by incredibly great supporters and a highly motivated team which worked together day and night for the good cause.
Warm greetings from us at Small Business Hero, and stay healthy.
Previously posted to JavaScript In Plain English
