SideQuest

Framing the Problem

At hackathons and tech conferences, attendees constantly hit small blockers like a buggy driver, a weird Linux install, a hardware quirk — that someone else in the room could solve in minutes. But there's no way to find that person. Teams stay siloed in their own corner, and the collective expertise in the room goes untapped. This affects attendees (slower progress, missed learning) and organizers (less collaboration, lower event energy).

Idea Explanation

SideQuest is a real-time bounty board for hackathons. Anyone can post a small "quest" (debug this, help install X, explain this circuit) with a bounty coin reward. Nearby hackers with matching skills get notified, claim the quest, solve it in person, and earn coins. A live leaderboard and organizer dashboard show top helpers and collaboration trends across the event.

Implementation

Frontend (Kendo UI components - Grid, Notification, Chart) lets users post/browse/claim quests and view the leaderboard. It sends REST requests to a backend API that handles quest creation, claiming, and coin transactions, storing everything in a database (users, quests, transactions). A real-time layer (WebSockets/polling) pushes new quest notifications to matching users and live-updates the leaderboard. An AI service tags incoming quests by skill category to route them to the right people.

Challenges

Biggest challenges were real-time sync (keeping the leaderboard and notifications live without lag) and skill-matching logic (avoiding spammy notifications to everyone). I overcame this by scoping the matching to tag-based filters first, with AI tagging as a stretch goal, and using WebSocket rooms per skill tag.

Accomplishments

I learned how to integrate Kendo UI components into a real-time data flow and built a working end-to-end loop: post quest → notify match → claim → resolve → award coins → update leaderboard. I accomplished a functional MVP demonstrating cross-team collaboration in a live setting.

Next Steps

Add AI-based skill matching and quest difficulty estimation, build the organizer analytics dashboard (collaboration heatmaps, skill-gap insights), add quest categories beyond technical (mentorship, design feedback), and pilot it at a real hackathon to validate engagement.