Bob pitches the GDA Finder app to a group of coders at Code With A Cause
The dimly lit hall held the anticipation of the 80 people gathered at the Covo STL co-working space last Friday, February 22. Ten St. Louis area non-profits had applied for and were about to ask some 60 technologists to design a technology solution for their organization’s problem. Our problem was to help diners find our Green Dining Alliance member restaurants to help grow our program’s value. We were hoping that someone would pick our project and create a mobile app so that anyone would have easy access to GDA restaurants.
Matt Minetti. the coordinator of this Code With A Cause event was with Global Hack and started the evening with a frenetic round of Extreme Rock, Paper, Scissors pitting everyone against AND for each other by having to cheer for the person that beat you in their next rounds. With the room split in two sides the game came to a stunning victory celebration erupting from the whole room when Brent, the executive director of the non-profit Wings of Hope, successfully papered the rock of his competitor. That was the last bit of competition in this totally collaborative event where help and support was provided wherever it was needed for any of the projects by the generosity of the designers, developers and coders.
Kurtus Kahle, treasurer of our board, volunteered his time to support the design of this app and Bob Henkel pitched the problem to the crowd by illustrating the struggle of using our website to locate restaurants near your location. Nearly half of U.S. consumers will change their buying habits to reduce their environmental impact and we want to get them to our stellar member restaurants. We were up against a lot of great projects including our partners at St. Louis BWorks and Home Sweet Home. No pressure; this event was designed to be collaborative and supportive which is exactly what we got in our dynamic duo: Tyler and Drew.
Team Tyler and Drew work to create the GDA Finder app.
Team Tyler and Drew were onboard immediately being super stoked to put their personal environmental values to work for a good cause. Drew’s favorite restaurant is Pizza Head. Tyler is a no-car bike commuter and even chose to be at this hackathon rather than a regional Pokemon event! He is a top-notch designer and was able to sketch up very quickly some screenshots of the potential mobile app we wanted that will check all our boxes on our priority list. GDA staff member, Victoria, was also on hand this weekend to provide feedback to the design.
Drew was our primary programmer developing the mapping technology and working with our website to grab all of the data that will show on the mobile app. We still have many features to work on over the next few months but we should have a pilot app ready to go very soon.
Look for this mobile app to go live soon and help us refine it!
