Inspiration
This past summer, our entire team experienced our first virtual summer internships and were able to compare that with what we had previously experienced in person. Seeing the differences, one of large gaps we identified was the divide between personal and professional relationships and settings. Seeing the issues with forced happy hours and awkward pauses in our work conversations, we wanted to create a platform that reintroduced the in-person watercooler conversations and future proofing the flexibility of “work” in a hybrid situation
What it does
MeetBetween is the first online platform that places emphasis on the future of work, which we see as a hybrid environment. It's an online platform that blends both physical and virtual work, providing people with the key interactions that’ll only increase productivity. Holding a multitude of features, Meet Between future proof the concept of work to be inclusive for all. The platform has two key features
- Users being able to play around with cursors to mimic real time characters. Allowing people to see who is online, and still allowing for those spontaneous coffee break conversations both for those online and in the office.
- Real time virtual meeting rooms to serve as real conference rooms in buildings. Users would be able to move in and out, engaging in less professional and facilitated meetings and focusing on more natural chitchat
How I built it
MeetBetween is built with the MERN stack (MongoDB, Express, React JS, Node). The application is then served altogether as a monolithic app on heroku. We also got the domain name from domain.com.
Challenges I ran into
Using the roomservice API for the first time was definitely the most challenging task we’ve encountered throughout this hackathon. This framework is relatively new and doesn’t have a lot of people using it, so finding support for this library proved to be quite difficult. Thankfully, there was a discord channel that we were able to join, where the developer of the library was able to answer some of our questions.
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
In the end, we felt challenged but proud that we were able to seek out different people’s help in integrating the room service API. Even as we were in a virtual hackathon, all the mentors were able to guide us through our build and roadblocks we had throughout the event. It was very exciting to finally see our platform come to live and everyone being able to interact with it! Additionally, going through the ideation process, it was great to see things conceptualize into a real platform that is fully functional.
What I learned
Throughout the creation of MeetBetween, we were able to learn about many aspects of developing a product. During the early stages of production, we learned to quickly come up with innovative ideas given the list of sponsors in the event. Along with efficient idea generation, we were able to read up about and try out numerous interesting APIs and services. One last final lesson we took away was perseverance. Whenever a document seems too confusing, or an error unresolvable, keep on trying and attacking the problem from different angles will always be your best bet.
What's next for MeetBetween
The next step is getting this app rolled out to different partners and be able to expand into other corporate offices. Additionally, one of the functions we were looking more into was being able to integrate the function of blocking certain users from entering rooms. For instance, if coincidentally a group of interns bump into each other at the coffee station and jump into a call, this group may not want the call to become too large.
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