ConvergenceAtelier

Framing the Problem

What is the problem you are trying to solve? Who does it affect?

Event organizers—at hackathons, conferences, and meetups—run their schedules across a patchwork of spreadsheets, chat threads, and static PDFs. When an agenda changes mid-event, attendees rarely find out in time, and organizers have no clean way to control who can edit what. The result is confusion, missed sessions, and organizers spending the event firefighting instead of running it. This affects anyone managing a multi-session event and every attendee trying to follow along.

Idea Explanation

What is your idea? How does it fix the problem?

ConvergenceAtelier is a single platform where organizers build and manage an event agenda and attendees view it live. Organizers sign in, create and edit events, and control access through roles—organizers can write, attendees can only view. Changes are reflected for everyone, so the agenda is always the single source of truth. It removes the scattered-tools problem by putting scheduling, access control, and live viewing in one place.

Implementation

How do all the pieces fit together? Does your frontend make requests to your backend? Where does your database fit in?

The frontend is React with TypeScript and KendoReact components, talking to a FastAPI (Python) backend over a REST API. Authentication is handled through Google OAuth. The backend manages events, agendas, and role-based permissions, persisting to a database. The whole stack is containerized with Docker and deployed live on Vultr. Quality was enforced from the start: unit, functional, and negative tests plus Playwright end-to-end tests, with a requirement traceability matrix mapping every requirement to its code and tests.

Frontend (React/KendoReact) → REST API → FastAPI backend → Database. Google OAuth sits in front of authentication; nginx fronts the deployment.

Challenges

What did you struggle with? How did you overcome it?

The hardest part was holding to a strict git-first, test-first discipline under hackathon time pressure—committing before every test run and chasing 100% coverage across unit, functional, negative, and E2E layers. Getting role-based access right (cleanly gating create/delete behind an organizer role without breaking the attendee view) took careful refactoring. Wiring KendoReact's licensing through the CI build so the frontend and end-to-end jobs would pass was another snag we had to solve.

Accomplishments

What did you learn? What did you accomplish?

We shipped a fully deployed, live platform—not just a local demo—with a complete CI pipeline and comprehensive automated test coverage. We're proud of building to an enterprise-grade engineering standard (sprint-based workflow, traceability matrix, full negative testing) within hackathon constraints, and of getting role-based access and Google auth working end to end.

Next Steps

What are the next steps for your project? How can you improve it?

If we had another hackathon's worth of time: Add real-time push updates (WebSockets) so agenda changes appear instantly on attendees' screens without a refresh, and build out the native mobile experience beyond the responsive web view.

In a month: Add multi-event/multi-organizer support so a single account can run several events, attendee notifications (email and push) for schedule changes, and a calendar export (iCal/Google Calendar sync). Introduce analytics for organizers—session attendance, popular tracks, drop-off points.

In a year: Grow into a full event-management suite—ticketing and registration, sponsor and speaker management, in-app networking for attendees, and an open API so organizers can integrate their own tools. Harden it for enterprise: SSO beyond Google, audit logs, and role hierarchies for large organizing teams.