What it does
HackerMatch is a web application that enables hackers to find teammates with similar interests and diverse skills that they can work with during hackathons. The application facilitates the team formation process by using member information, including technical skills such as coding languages, and areas of interest in the form of keywords to match with other parties.
Why is this important
On the first day of a hackathon, precious time that can be used on hacks and project development is wasted on finding teammates. Additionally, hackers may not match with their team and lose the opportunity to create with more compatible teammates simply because they don’t know of them. It's difficult to mingle with other hackers to form teams as some hackers already have project ideas and strategies. A virtual hackathon makes finding a team even more difficult, since hackers can’t communicate and share ideas as easily as they can at in-person hackathons. After noting these issues, my team and I believed there had to be a more effective way to find fellow hackers to collaborate with. HackerMatch can minimize the time spent on team formation, allowing hackers to find others with similar interests and technologies quickly.
How It Works
Upon registration, the user is prompted to enter their information, including their email address and password for authentication, a list of personal or technical keywords for matching, and most importantly a list of their technical skills. All of this information is then stored in a database. Because HackerMatch uses a firebase database to store all of this information, this hack falls under the Google Cloud category. The matching algorithm right now is really simple and will be improved in the future. But for now it’s good enough for demonstration purposes. The algorithm essentially goes through all of the users in the database and performs several checks. The first few checks are straightforward. For example, the user shouldn’t have passed or matched the other person before, and vice versa. Then we calculate the keyword score, and a technologies score. If both scores are higher than a certain threshold then it could be a potential match and it is displayed to the user for them to decide on this potential match. They can either pass or try to match them. When a match is made, they can then see each others’ contact information. They also have the option to unmatch if they made a mistake
Why HackerMatch
We know that a hackathon teammate matching application is not a unique idea, but we were not able to find any functional prototypes, nor were there any mention of a matching algorithm. As a result, we strived to create such a matching application that works and actually has a matching process. Our web application is functional and you can try it here.
What's next for HackerMatch
- Convert our web application into a mobile application for better accessibility
- Better algorithm (detailed survey? For matching algorithm for more specificity?)
- Better authentication and security
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