Hello y'all!
We've been talking about this for a while now, and it's finally happened: the Bayerwald Hackathon! 🚀 Last time, Tamara and Jörn developed Flottform's very first prototype. This time, Nidhal joined us and we could finally meet in person. Together, we focused more on the actual problems you can solve with Flottform. The Bayerwald Hackathon was a fantastic opportunity for our team to really dive deep into discovering new ways that Flottform can be used. We set out to push the boundaries and found exciting new ways to enhance user experiences.
From brainstorming to development
We kicked things off with a brainstorming session, discussing various scenarios where Flottform could be helpful, from shopping to enhancing HR tools. Instead of thinking about our technical solution, we identified problems and then checked whether they could - and should - be solved with Flottform.
One of the most interesting and easy-to-build use cases we found was a location sharing tool. Some messangers already have built-in solutions for this, but what if you use different messengers, or you want to share your location with your colleague and you only use Google Chat or emails? Or imagine, your grandmother went on a shopping trip. To help her with all her bags, you want to order her a taxi. But she cannot tell you her exact location. It can be tricky to explain how to share a location via messenger, especially when the person you're trying to help doesn't know where to look. It would be so much easier if we could send them a link and they only need to click on one button!
At the same time, we don't want to share our location data with some random provider. Flottform allows us to securely share it, without exposing it to a third-party server.
Creating “where-are-you.at”
We started with naming our new project and finding a domain name. Stefan Hoferer, one of the participants at the Bayerwald Hackathon suggested using "wo-bist-du-gera.de". While this is a fun gimmick with the domain extension, in the end we chose international version: "where-are-you.at"
For "where-are-you.at," we didn't have to build the whole product from scratch. We could use Flottform internally for creating a WebRTC connection between devices. Before the hackathon, we implemented a few small but helpful changes to Flottform, making it possible to send different types of input through a WebRTC connection. Even though there were a few challenges along the way, we were able to get through them together!
Promoting “where-are-you.at”
Our goal for this hackathon was to get our new tool online as a second demo use-case.
As you probably have noticed by now, we don't consider ourselves marketing experts. Building in public was a necessity for us to gain traction and gather initial feedback. Naturally, writing marketing pages about our tool isn't the most thrilling part for us. To mitigate this, we decided to make these more fun for ourselves: We always write a short story with us as the protagonists in the form of a comic.
The main idea behind the use-case pages is to make the reader think of where they can apply Flottform in their own product. A story could spark their imagination and creativity - even if they aren't able to apply one of the use-cases. At least, they should at least be able to laugh at the characters who keep getting themselves into trouble.
For the idea behind where-are-you.at, we've created a story about Jörn getting lost in Cologne.
A few words about Hackathon
A hackathon isn't just about coding; it's also about networking and having fun. One of the highlights was driving a Segway around the event space - it was a nice way to try something new and maybe even overcome your fear to fall down 😅.
Connecting with other people, exchanging ideas and learning about different technologies is a lot of fun. But In the end, the best part is to see how a tool develops from an idea into a fully-functional solution in just one night with the magic of coffee ☕, pizza 🍕 and a motivated team.
Having where-are-you.at makes it easy to request the location of a person. It's very simple to use and allows you to share location data without saving this information on a third-party server. You are in control of whether and what you share and which of your own or your friends devices you connect.
This is quite different to our first use-case about returns and complaints, showing the flexibility and versatility of Flottform.
We can't wait to see what the future holds for this tool!
Go and try out 'where-are-you.at' right now and share your feedback with us! We'd love to hear from you. Your insights and perspectives are helping us refine and improve our tools. Do you have a use-case in mind we may not have checked?
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Cheers,
