{"id":13142,"date":"2016-06-13T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-06-13T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/post\/hackathon-cashless-donations-app\/"},"modified":"2022-08-02T20:21:57","modified_gmt":"2022-08-03T00:21:57","slug":"hackathon-cashless-donations-app","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/blog\/hackathon-cashless-donations-app\/","title":{"rendered":"Centric 2016 Hackathon Project: An App for Cashless Donations"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>We got together to create a solution for never carrying cash.<\/h2>\n<p class=\"intro-text\">While walking down the street after lunch, two of my colleagues were approached by someone who needed a few spare dollars. They only had credit cards on them. So they couldn&#8217;t help.<\/p>\n<p>But this sparked a conversation about how we live in a cashless society. How standard transactions are becoming digitized by virtual wallets and technology-driven payment solutions. And, how this might be impacting the service industry that lives off cash tips: baristas, valets, delivery drivers. How do we help? Enter Centric&#8217;s 2016 Hackathon project: OpenAlms.<\/p>\n<h2>Creating Technology Solutions<\/h2>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/Hackathon_2016_091.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-14034\" src=\"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/Hackathon_2016_091-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"Centric Hackathon 2016\" width=\"270\" height=\"203\" loading=\"lazy\" \/><\/a>In an effort to solve this cashless society dilemma, Centric technologists and analysts from\u00a0Cincinnati, Miami, Boston, National, and Shared Services joined folks in Columbus to\u00a0spend the weekend, which kicked off on Friday, June 3, coding a\u00a0solution.<\/p>\n<p>Our focus was on\u00a0designing OpenAlms: an application to provide a safe, effective way for\u00a0a person\u00a0&#8211; without cash &#8211; to give\u00a0money to someone in need.\u00a0Given that our\u00a0goal was to make it possible to donate\u00a0to someone on the street, we had a lot to factors to consider.\u00a0As the Hackathon Team started to brainstorm conceptual functionality of this product, we had to consider:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"line-height: 1.5;\">Available Technology<\/span><\/li>\n<li>Practicality<\/li>\n<li>Potential Barriers<\/li>\n<li>How to\u00a0Build<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>We were in luck! Our team had the perfect combination of skills to develop\u00a0OpenAlms,\u00a0a primarily mobile application that leverages beacon technology to allow registered users, called Givers, to make safe, convenient cashless donations to\u00a0a registered recipient.<\/p>\n<p>For the exchange to occur, Recipients must\u00a0register to receive an OpenAlms credit card. Recipients can do this by signing up through a community partner such as a homeless shelter or food bank. The Recipient&#8217;s information is stored and assigned to a beacon within the credit card. This credit card can only be used for specific transactions &#8211; and the transaction history can be monitored by an administrator. Think of it like an EBT credit card,\u00a0or food stamps.<\/p>\n<h2>Coding and Implementing\u00a0New Technology<\/h2>\n<p>As we began coding this application over the weekend, we made sure to keep in mind the following: safety, convenience, and the best solution for implementation. We developed several methods to ensure the safety of the Giver, the security of the transaction, and the prevention of misuse by recipients.<\/p>\n<p>One thing&#8217;s for sure: The solution architecture for this technology is sound and viable. We were able to demo a successful donation from a\u00a0Giver to a\u00a0Recipient and track the activity in our database. However, we recognized that there are several functional considerations we need to explore before\u00a0successfully implementing the full solution. We have ideas for this too.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/Hackathon_2016_336.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-14033 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/Hackathon_2016_336-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"Centric Hackathon_2016\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" loading=\"lazy\" \/><\/a>Not only is the solution exciting and unique, but we had a great time working as a team to develop it.\u00a0We came together with our own unique skills to cross train, learn\u00a0on the fly, and act\u00a0with all-hands-on-deck attitude to deliver our end result. And we had a TON of fun in the process!<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">My\u00a0colleague, Erynn Truex, a CS&amp;D Analyst with Shared Services said it best:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">&#8220;The Hackathon provided a venue in which\u00a0everyone\u00a0met new people, worked together to create or experience something new, and\u00a0learned.\u00a0We all came away knowing a little more about our work, but most importantly, about our colleagues. Some of us learned from heavyweights at\u00a0the company, some of us learned from simple questions asked by peers, and some of us learned that the best solution often comes after a good night\u2019s rest.&#8221;<\/p>\n<h2>About Centric Hackathon<\/h2>\n<p>Based on feedback from <a href=\"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/campio-is-coming-and-were-ready-hackathon-too\/\">Centric&#8217;s Camp IO\/Hackathon<\/a> combination event last summer, the Hackathon received\u00a0its own dedicated weekend. Participants were very receptive to this change and are looking forward to more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Centric Hackathon 2016 led to OpenAlms, an application to provide a safe, effective way to make cashless donations to someone in need.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":63,"featured_media":17715,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_oasis_is_in_workflow":0,"_oasis_original":0,"_oasis_task_priority":"","_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[15012],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2024-07-22 00:01:46","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13142"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/63"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13142\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13142"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=13142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}