🏆 LOOM HOLIDAY HACK WINNER 🏆Â
This project means a lot to me for many reasons! It was my first ever hackathon, the first time anyone viewed my code, and the first time I knew I could build software beyond side-gigs for extra cash.
Completing the project was a major step, but then winning, and receiving the judges choice award, which allowed me to speak to the Loom executive team, is a moment that changed my trajectory in regards to building software.
I spoke to them about business, their mindset, how they think about creating value to customers and their investors, and how they think about employee engagement and creating cultures that drive innovation. The team I got to speak to for 90-minutes was the same team to lead Loom to be a near-unicorn acquisition for Atlassian ~2 years later.
The Loom executive team was gracious in their compliments. However, I attribute Loom CEO Joe Thomas' specific encouragement and words of wisdom for me to continue to be a “builder” for giving me the external validation I attribute to where I am today. Thanks, Joe!
Start here
Loom video inspiration and walkthrough:
Inspiration
We want to make it easier for teams and organizations to have values-based dialogue in order to facilitate deeper connections, more productivity, and improve cultures.
What it does
It empowers teams to connect and foster a deeper understanding of one another beyond the everyday discourse that would occur in a normal working environment.
We allow a team admin to create a tailored selection of values for their team to choose from and create a video in an engaging and easy way, using the power of Loom.
How we built it
We used tools that make it easy to get right into what matters: creating an application that people want to use. We use NextJs on the frontend with Supabase Postgres instance for the backend with Vercel handling the hosting on their powerful global edge network.
Challenges we ran into
Non-Technical How do you allow a team member to speak to something that is deeply important to them? You need to make it safe and provide prompts that make it feel effortless. In order to make everyone comfortable, we allow the user to preview what it will look like to engage in the experience before actually doing it. We also provide helpful prompts that make it easy to articulate what the value means to them, what living it more fully will look like, and why that matters to their life.
Technical We are not a technical team. Creating a project, deploying it, and adding functionality were full of fun and exciting challenges along the way.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Committing to something new with the knowledge you are submitting it for judging takes courage, to begin with! My job not being a developer in any way adds to this friction. I am proud I committed, created something I was inspired by, and followed through by submitting it!
What we learned
I learned how small things take more time. Taking an application from an idea to a functioning thing is a multi-step process that I knew nothing about before beginning my journey with this challenge.
I learned a lot about git and version control and going back in time when you make a mistake.
I learned about integrating with a database.
What's next for Values-based conversations
I would like to build out its core functionality with further tools to empower team administrators to cater the application to their use case by modifying questions, adding custom values, moderating submissions, and more. I would also like to refactor and optimize with a focus on accessibility