This is my submission to the Worlds largest hackathon writing challenge.
I began my journey into coding around 6 months ago, I was never a coder in fact i was a retail worker doing night shifts for a local supermarket. I was doomscrolling X one day ( Everyone does ) and came across a post from Peiter levels (Levelsio) about his new project flypieter.com. As i slowly read through the post it was like a glowing light came from my phone. It was now possible to use AI to build apps, and not just simple ones! I was in immediately.
When i got home from that shift i hopped on the laptop and started researching what was possible and i was amazed, IDE's had now shown up, and i had no idea! I'd say a lot of the population still doesn't know it yet but we are in a new era now, the era where anyone can build anything as long as they are willing to learn!
So, i had the knowledge and will to build, but what do i build? no idea. I didn't know where to begin, i built a few small games with three.js inside cursor but honestly the lack of backend knowledge was really painful. I am still a beginner remember, never touched code before so i was genuinely getting confused.
Then one day on X i heard of Bolt.new, So i gave it a try and i was blown away. I integrated Supabase for auth and database and executed RLS policies in one shot, no problems. It was incredible! I was building and building with no purpose just because i could! Then I saw a post from KP and Eric that they were holding the worlds largest hackathon, and anyone could join. I was all in from the start.
I wanted to think differently and try to do something not many others would attempt (so i thought) that's when i got the idea for Story-sphere, a new way for people to connect! iv'e always enjoyed hearing peoples stories and memories, so why not create a way for the world to share them in a new way? By placing pins on an interactive map with images and the stories too! I used leaflet maps at first, it was good enough for the MVP and easily changeable later on. I wanted to build fast and launch quickly, so any bugs or mistakes would be caught and fixed easily. This proved a valuable decision as out of 120,000 submissions only around 10,000 were submitted in time! Ship fast.
I updated the simple map to a Mapbox alternative that is much better, it's now a spinnable globe with awesome detail as you zoom! As soon as judging is over its getting more massive updates including notifications and local knowledge just to start! Currently we sit at 62 users and 32 pins from around the world form America to India. Hopefully activity will pick up as i market more and more!
Right now we are 9 days from judging. I don't expect to win anything, but iv'e gained valuable knowledge and awesome friends along the way, great people who are always willing to help. I lost my job around a week into the hackathon and i'm still searching, but maybe i wont need one soon! Maybe just maybe Story-Sphere has one more story to tell.
Im open to any questions or contact! I'm UK based but ill jump on a teams call with anyone who wants it :) #worldslargesthackathon
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