Over a weekend in October, Less Annoying CRM’s programmers raced against the clock to design, develop, and present a brand new mobile app. The cause for their mad dash to make an app? Global Hack, an annual competition that brings together technologists and students from across St. Louis to create apps and technology with a social impact.
This year’s Global Hack was all about improving and reshaping the experience of foreign-born individuals and communities in St. Louis (where LACRM HQ and most of the development team is located). To meet the challenge, Less Annoying CRM’s dev team created an app that brings foreign-born individuals and St. Louis families together over a good, home cooked meal.
“Welcome Home” allows foreign-born St. Louisans to create a profile, establishing their personality and language skills. Then, they are matched with a local family that shares a language in common with them. After exchanging voice messages via the app to see if their language skills are compatible, the pair will set a dinner date and meet in person!
The goal of the app is to bring people together and strengthen their sense of community — and what better way to do that than with food! Both parties benefit: the foreign-born individual gets to practice their language skills and share their culture, and the local family has a fun, authentic experience they can’t find anywhere else.
“My favorite part was bonding with everyone on the dev team,” said Katelyn, a new LACRM employee and our designer at the hackathon. Katelyn was responsible for planning everything the user would see when they opened the app. Take a look for yourself:
"Welcome Home" allows foreign-born St. Louisans to create a profile, establishing their personality and language skills. Then, they are matched with a local family that shares a language in common with them. After exchanging voice messages via the app to see if their language skills are compatible, the pair will set a dinner date and meet in person!
Katelyn and the team worked for close to 48 hours straight to create the new app. “It was crazy!” she said. “I’ve never done anything like that before. It was a very fun team bonding experience. Everyone was very delirious at 4am and eating Jack in the Box, but we were all pretty proud of what we accomplished in the end.”
Kelly, another new face at LACRM HQ, enjoyed meeting other teams at the hackathon: “There were quite a few people that came up to us and were genuinely interested in what we had built and also wanted to share with us what they did. Being able to get feedback as well as validation from them was certainly enjoyable.”
Katelyn, Kelly, and the rest of the dev team are already excited for next year’s hack!
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