## Inspiration

Today Instagram has become a huge platform for social activism and encouraging people to contribute to different causes. I've donated to several of these causes but have always been met with a clunky UI that takes several minutes to fully fill out. With the donation inertia already so high, it makes sense to simplify the process and that's exactly what Activst does.

## What it does

It provides social media users to create a personalized profile of what causes they support and different donation goals. Each cause has a description of the rationale behind the movement and details of where the donation money will be spent. Then the user can specify how much they want to donate and finish the process in one click.

## How we built it

ReactJS, Firebase Hosting, Google Pay, Checkbook API, Google Cloud Functions (Python)

## Challenges we ran into

It's very difficult to facilitate payments directly to donation providers and create a one click process to do so as many of the donation providers require specific information from the donor. Using checkbook's API simplified this process as we could simply send a check to the organization's email. CORS.

## What's next for Activst

Add in full payment integration and find a better way to complete the donation process without needing any user engagement. Launch, beta test, iterate, repeat. The goal is to have instagram users have an activst url in their instagram bio.
## Inspiration 🌱

Climate change is affecting every region on earth. The changes are widespread, rapid, and intensifying. The UN states that we are at a pivotal moment and the urgency to protect our Earth is at an all-time high. We wanted to harness the power of social media for a greater purpose: promoting sustainability and environmental consciousness.

## What it does 🌎

Inspired by BeReal, the most popular app in 2022, BeGreen is your go-to platform for celebrating and sharing acts of sustainability. Everytime you make a sustainable choice, snap a photo, upload it, and you’ll be rewarded with Green points based on how impactful your act was! Compete with your friends to see who can rack up the most Green points by performing more acts of sustainability and even claim prizes once you have enough points 😍.

## How we built it 🧑‍💻

We used React with Javascript to create the app, coupled with firebase for the backend. We also used Microsoft Azure for computer vision and OpenAI for assessing the environmental impact of the sustainable act in a photo.

## Challenges we ran into 🥊

One of our biggest obstacles was settling on an idea as there were so many great challenges for us to be inspired from.

## Accomplishments that we're proud of 🏆

We are really happy to have worked so well as a team. Despite encountering various technological challenges, each team member embraced unfamiliar technologies with enthusiasm and determination. We were able to overcome obstacles by adapting and collaborating as a team and we’re all leaving uOttahack with new capabilities.

## What we learned 💚

Everyone was able to work with new technologies that they’ve never touched before while watching our idea come to life. For all of us, it was our first time developing a progressive web app. For some of us, it was our first time working with OpenAI, firebase, and working with routers in react.

## What's next for BeGreen ✨

It would be amazing to collaborate with brands to give more rewards as an incentive to make more sustainable choices. We’d also love to implement a streak feature, where you can get bonus points for posting multiple days in a row!
## Inspiration

As college students, we know that internships are extremely valuable as it provides us with the opportunity to take the theoretical knowledge we gain in class and apply it to the real world. However, the process of finding internships is slightly flawed. The career fair allows for quality in-person interactions between students and recruiters, but we have found that there are certain opportunities we can capitalize on. On the student end, we found that students often have to wait in hour long lines to meet with just a few recruiters on the off chance that they can fit the career fair into their busy schedule. On the other hand, recruiters have to pay exorbitant fees to attend career fairs, and it can be very expensive when you take into account registration fees, traveling, room and board, and so on.

## What It Currently Does

NXTPitch allows for students to upload short elevator pitches similar to the ones they use at career fairs when meeting recruiters. Students can then upload supplemental videos, links to important social media such as LinkedIn, Github, etc, and have the opportunity to set 4 skills. Recruiters can then look through a feed of these videos; if they find an individual who fits their skill-set, they can look at the rest of their profile, chat with them and even schedule an interview. Furthermore, recruiters can also search for certain skills that they are looking for in a candidate; the system will then look for individuals that have those skills listed in their profile and display them to the recruiter.

## What We Built

For Cal Hacks 2017 we decided to do a continuation project, and build an additional feature for our application. We created an AI backend, that enables students to receive automated feedback regarding the effectiveness of their videos and resumes/cover letters. Our AI backend analyzes the text and delivery of your content, and provides you with personalized analytics regarding how effective your content was. We break effectiveness down into three categories: emotional analysis, highlighted content, and professionalism and provide quantitative metrics for each of these categories using state of the art machine learning technology. We want to enable students not only to find jobs faster but also to find better jobs.

## How We Built It

We built the application using iOS Swift for the user interface, Firebase for the main database, and a Python Webserver backed by Google Cloud for the backend. We also utilized various Machine Learning API's such IBM Watson and Microsoft Azure, for facial and textual analysis. The AI backend relies on many different Machine Learning API's, Python packages, and custom functionality to enable audio extraction from video, textual extraction from PDF's, and analysis of the content. We believe that our main feature is our ability to tightly integrate all these different services into a single application that provides immediate value to our end user.

## Challenges We Ran Into

Since this was the first project we developed in iOS Swift, it provided us with various challenges as we had to get accustomed to language. In addition, implementation of the Python Webserver proved to be a challenge as it was our first time porting Python code to a server backend. Working with all the different API's was also a challenge, and ensuring the robustness of our application required many layers of error checking.

## Accomplishments That We Are Proud Of

We are proud of the Machine Learning engine that was built over the Cal Hacks weekend. It is our most sophisticated feature and we managed to get an MVP of it within 36 hours. It already has impressive functionality, and should help differentiate our product from anything else out there.

## What We Learned

We gained experience with a wide range of technologies such as iOS Swift, Firebase, Google Cloud, Azure, Flask, and so on. Additionally we gained experience in working with non-trivial API's in a demanding environment. Finally we also learned how to properly configure a backend infrastructure.

## What's next for NXTPitch

NXTPitch is currently running small beta testing at UCLA with a dozen students and a few campus recruiters. If you're interested, feel free to contact us!