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| A proposed e-marketplace for volunteers won the top prize in the Mosque Tech Challenge. The winning team received S$1,000. Each team member also got a General Assembly voucher of S$150. |
The Mosque Tech Challenge hackathon saw seven teams propose community-building technology projects which they built, typically from scratch, overnight at Darul Makmur Mosque in Singapore. This year's theme explored how technology can build communities and bring people closer to each other.
The Mentor Me app crowdsources information from the public so that the public can post difficult questions online and receive proposed answers to the problem from others in an online forum. Users will see lists of questions which are in their area of interest, and may answer them or post questions of their own. The app also acts as a marketplace with the "find a mentor" feature, which allows students who need some help with a concept to be matched with mentors nearby who have some available time to teach a student on an ad hoc basis. The team also thought of incentive schemes to encourage volunteerism, from ratings to virtual badges and credits. The app allows users and answers to be rated, while mentors will be validated before they are matched with students.
The MusyQyl app is a Q&A platform that allows people to ask questions about Islam either in public or anonymously, and have accredited asatizahs (Islamic teachers) answer the questions. The app also lists events which are being organised at various mosques. Chatbots are used to facilitate the conversations.
Taaruf-SG, created by a team from Indonesia who are working in Singapore, is a matchmaking app which helps people find significant others. Users receive only one match at a time, and their first meeting is in a group setting, facilitated by mosque personnel.
This team brings volunteers and organisations which need volunteers together with a platform that lists available volunteer opportunities by different categories. Opportunities are automatically removed from the list on the VolunteerNow platform when positions are filled, and registered volunteers receive alerts when there are new job opportunities that match their interests. This proposal won first prize in the competition.
The Where to 吃 app marries the sharing economy for bicycles with restaurant food. The bike serving platform offers recommendations and discounts for restaurants, allows users to order the food online, and also offers locations for rental bicycles available from various companies in Singapore so that restaurants can easily deliver the food by bicycle. Individuals can also cycle to the restaurant to get their food. Revenues come from commissions earned from the restaurants, as opposed to the bicycle rental companies. According to the presenter, this benefits restaurants by directing customers to them; boosts bicycle rentals; and provides a meta platform for bike rentals as well as discounted food and new restaurant recommendations to the public.
The Jemaah app allows those going to the mosque for Friday prayers to offer Grab or Uber rides to others rushing to do the same. They may either sponsor the ride by paying the full fare, or split the fare. The app allows users to see where rides are available on a map, and how much it would cost. The presenter was one of the developers of the Terawhere app, which basically brings drivers willing to provide rides to teraweeh prayers together with those who would like to go for them. This app proposal won third prize in the competition.
Makan Hero addresses the problem of leftovers after catering an event. Instead of throwing the food away, event organisers can use the Makan Hero app to inform people of free food for the taking nearby, including details such as how much food is still available and how long the food will remain at the venue. Lists of available food will begin with venues where the food is expiring earliest, and both organisers and consumers can be upvoted or downvoted to reflect the accuracy of information provided. This team won the second prize.
Md Hisham, one of the participants at the hackathon, advises those interested in hackathons to come prepared with several ideas and a framework to describe, test and implement the ideas. "Come to the hackathon prepared with APIs and other software libraries needed," he said. "These are the necessary things to do because during a hackathon, lots of time will be lost looking for APIs and libraries, also known as software tools, instead of completing the actual code."
Judges were impressed with the quality of the proposals. "If this is what we can achieve in 24 hours, imagine what we can achieve in 24 days or 24 months," said a representative of the judges. The judges added that the quality of participants has improved every year, and that they hope to see more participants and international teams at the hackathon in future.
Interested?
Read the Suroor Asia blog post about the Mosque Tech Challenge
Find out more about Terawhere
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