Aggie LaunchPad

Inspiration

Big companies and university students are always looking for useful ways to give back to their communities. And in my experience volunteering with nonprofits like food banks, homeless shelters, and donation centers, these organizations, especially in Davis, are always looking for volunteers to help out.

What it does

Our product aims directly at solving that problem: by combining the humanitarian efforts of nonprofits, the expertise of big companies, and the innovation and knowledge of university students, we created Aggie LaunchPad: a platform for Aggies that uses innovative machine learning to bring together nonprofits, companies, and students for them to all work together on technological projects for social good.

This relationship is mutually beneficial, and positive affects everyone involved. Students get valuable experience working on beneficial projects. Companies can give back by lending their technology to give back to their communities. And most importantly, nonprofits get valuable volunteers and massive improvements to their operations. This is already happening in Davis: the UC Davis Pantry has partnered with Salesforce and a team of software engineers to build an inventory management system, and this is just the beginning.

How we built it

To help launch students to orbit into meaningful partnerships with local nonprofits, companies, and other students, we used Tensorflow.js machine learning to match people together based on their stated interests. We used Javascript, HTML, and CSS for our website.

Challenges we ran into

We ran into troubles with SQLite on our Google Cloud server and ended up having to use a CSV file for our database. In the future, we plan to implement a proper embedded database with better security. We also faced the difficulty of learning a lot about web development in a short amount of time. Learning how to use Tensorflow.js for the first time was also quite a journey.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

For three of us, this is our third hackathon (the first hackathon for one member), and this project has our best UI yet. A point of emphasis for our team was to have a nice looking interface that catches the eye of the user. We came in with little web development experience but were able to implement some neat animations and create a dynamic website.

What we learned

From this project, we learned a lot about about building algorithms with Tensorflow.js and how to work more efficiently with data-based platforms like the Google Sheets API. We also learned a lot about design principles and using JS and CSS for web-development. As predominantly backend developers, this was a very new experience for us.

What's next for Aggie LaunchPad

We will reach out to representatives at local nonprofits and companies and get groups of students involved in our platform.

Built With

• css
• google-cloud
• html
• javascript
• sqlite
• tensorflow.js
• unix