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SecureAid
203 Plays3 years ago
TEAMMATES: Umar Ahmed Badami, Adam McDonald, Brian Slusher, Tynan Kavanaugh, Matthew Robinson, Morgan Morris
TEAM LEADER: Morgan Morris
TAGLINE: Securely bringing help to those who need it most.
IDEA: Secure and verified messaging portal connecting aid organizations to at-risk individuals in humanitarian crises.
PROBLEM THAT YOUR TEAM IS SOLVING: In a humanitarian crisis, trusting the wrong email or text could have deadly consequences. Our project provides users with an ability to freely communicate with verified aid organizations while located in dangerous situations.
FOR WHOM ARE YOU SOLVING THE PROBLEM: Primarily for supporting those currently involved with the Afghanistan refugee crisis, but the app can be practically used in an assortment of arenas.
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Transcript
Introductions from the Team
00:00:00
Speaker
whatever final thing but alright guys welcome to our recording so let's start off with introducing everybody I just want you to tell me a little bit about yourself if you guys are active military if you're a veteran and let's just start with there so who wants to start Umar do you want to start
00:00:18
Speaker
Sure, so hopefully you guys can hear me okay. Hi, I'm Omar. I'm an intern TA at Coquiltoon. I'm not affiliated with the military in any way, but I've been working with some of the guys on the team for the past few months in class. Awesome, who's
Career Transitions and Inspirations
00:00:38
Speaker
next? Go ahead, just jump in.
00:00:40
Speaker
Sure, I'm tight Cavanaugh. Okay. I was a Navy corpsman. I got out just at the beginning of this year, jumped right into like sort of an IT job, but I would just study, you know, I studied on my breaks while I was in enough to land a decent enough job because you don't really have to know much, especially a clearance.
00:01:02
Speaker
And it was all right. And but then I just kind of was like, I want to do more creative stuff. So I started trying to see how good development jumped into coke platoon. So that's where we are right now. We're about halfway through coke platoon, learning how to do for full stack software engineering. Awesome. Who's next? Yeah, I'm Brian slusher. 10 year army veteran, I was preventive medicine. I was the guy that told people wash their hands.
00:01:31
Speaker
Pretty much for the last while, I've been working in the pharmacy, and I decided that I wanted to change. I had a few days left on my VA benefits, and the vet tech program required one. So I thought, what the heck? And I jumped right in. I haven't looked back since. Awesome. I think Morgan, your last one?
00:01:59
Speaker
I suppose so. Yeah, so I'm Morgan Morris. I am going to be retiring in February. And I've been in special operations for my entire career, which kind of led to the idea for the app that we made for the hackathon. I've worked with a lot of foreign nationals and had a number of different interpreters.
00:02:29
Speaker
And with this whole Afghanistan withdrawal fiasco that's been going on, one of my interpreters' families stuck in Kabul and been trying to help get them out. There's a ton of people who are trying to get out. So that was kind of the original thought behind the app. So it's a good segue, I guess.
00:02:53
Speaker
Yeah. Well, let's start talking about the app and how it came together.
Introduction of Secure Aid
00:02:57
Speaker
So Group 7, right? Is that what your Team 7, I believe? Okay. So yeah, tell us about the app that you guys created. What was it about? What was the idea behind it? Sure. So I was going to say,
00:03:14
Speaker
similar to what we tried to do with our presentation. I'll give a little bit more overview, Umar, if you want to tie up the linking the overall idea to some of the technical aspects, and then Ty and Brian, you guys talk about the inner workings of the app.
00:03:44
Speaker
Yeah, so the idea was essentially a way to authenticate and securely communicate with people overseas. So one of the bigger problems that I've been seeing with folks in Afghanistan is, you know, there's a whole bunch of people in the United States who have worked with Afghans. And so we've got that 2A communication still going on.
00:04:11
Speaker
And so we all take that information about those families that we're trying to help. We pass that along to God knows who many people to try and help them in one way or another. And then the folks overseas start getting emails. And we are finding that very often there are emails or text messages sent that are phony. It's Taliban who are sending the messages saying,
00:04:39
Speaker
Hey, we're with a foreign aid organization and you should go to, we need you to go to this place at this time. And they show up and they get rounded up and very bad things happen, right? So we wanted to have a way to authenticate who they're talking to.
Technical Development with Django
00:05:01
Speaker
So with that backstory, I'm gonna pass this off to Umar.
00:05:06
Speaker
Thanks a lot. So yeah, basically our project, which is called secure aid, allows people
00:05:14
Speaker
whether on the ground or organizations or affected individuals to establish secure lines of communication with essentially people who can help them get out of whatever situation they're in. So our platform can be used basically for any conflict anywhere in the world. It's not necessarily localized, which is one of the best things about it.
00:05:37
Speaker
How security works is that we use a centralized database of individuals, again, both in terms of people who are on the ground, people who are being affected, and organizations.
00:05:58
Speaker
essentially creates one-on-one communications channels between our trusted individuals, such as members of eight organizations or, say, people who know people in Afghanistan or other such countries, et cetera, basically trusted individuals with the vulnerable people who are trying to help. And then over time, as these one-on-one secured channels get used more, we can get more information about the
00:06:27
Speaker
specific needs and conditions of the people who need our help. For example, if, let's say you're connecting with a family in Afghanistan and they need specific medical assistance, well, we get that request. Somebody who knows that that family would come to security and tell us, hey, we know these people on the ground. We need to find a way to get them medically. And so we would connect them with somebody who we know from, say, America,
00:06:53
Speaker
who runs a medical aid organization. And then they would get in touch using that one-on-one secure channel with the individual on the ground. And then through the course of more conversation, you can fill in more details about, say, what specific aid they need, whether it's like, do they need an influenza? Maybe they've got a medical problem, but they also, for example, need transport or passports and so on. And using that system, we're able to just establish a series of
00:07:17
Speaker
secure one-on-one communication links between trusted individuals in order to get these people the help they need. And with that, I will pass it off to Ty and Brian to talk about how our system works.
00:07:31
Speaker
Awesome, yeah, so we started out, we had some kind of different ideas about how to do authentication, how we're going to do communication, and essentially the core of our system, we just took like, none of us, I don't think any of us had ever worked with Django before, but we figured that was the way to go. And it was, had, you know, it been people who are better with Django. But I think we did a lot in the,
00:07:56
Speaker
By looking at different projects that existed before, using the documentation of Django channels, we were able to build a chat app, some authentication mechanisms, and stuff like that.
00:08:12
Speaker
It ended up being quite a challenge, though, to figure out all the different particularities of Django on the fly while also trying to create something, discovering that Django 1, 2, and 3, different components built for those don't necessarily all work together very great. I had a lot of fun with that. Trying to figure out how to get CSS to work was interesting for someone who never used Django before.
00:08:38
Speaker
So it's pretty interesting. We also had Michael, who's not here. He did the, I did sort of everything. I did the Django that wasn't the database. Well, he did the models and backend, like the back backend side as well. And then, yeah, everybody definitely
00:09:01
Speaker
put a lot of work in trying to figure all these technologies that we were unfamiliar with out.
Team Dynamics and Task Management
00:09:05
Speaker
And then funny enough, this week right now, all of us are learning Django. So it's like, oh, I really wish I knew exactly how to do this about a week and a half ago. One other thing that should be mentioned is we also had a graded assessment that same weekend that we did the hackathon. So it was a long weekend. Yeah, I get to redo that one.
00:09:31
Speaker
All right. So how did you guys determine who was going to work on what? I mean, now you guys are doing this other class. So give me a little bit of background. You guys kind of know each other from doing this. Does everyone know each other or did you guys know each other prior to the hackathon? Prior to the hackathon. Yes. Uh, we're all in the same cohort together. Um, are is one of our main TAs and he is an absolutely fantastic resource. Uh, but, uh,
00:09:58
Speaker
Ty Morgan and myself, we're all students in there and we have very limited background in in web development. So it was actually fun to see exactly where we stand at this point in our learning. It was kind of a test, right? Pretty much. It was fun.
00:10:18
Speaker
All right, so you had a little bit of a benefit because you kind of knew each other, which might be different than other teams. And then how did you guys determine who was going to do what? What did that process look like?
00:10:30
Speaker
So I guess in the beginning, it was mostly just a lot of brainstorming on everyone's part to figure out what our project was actually going to look like. And by the end of a Friday evening, I think, we'd actually come away with a concrete idea for secure aid and for the system we wanted to implement. And then after that, it just ended up turning into, well, how do we break down our idea into smaller subparts that we can divvy up?
00:10:54
Speaker
Um, so, you know, the course has been going on now for about like two months. So we've had experience. Some people have had experience with databases and the basics of Django and HTML and so on. And basically the main way that we decided who would work on which part is simply by saying.
00:11:10
Speaker
Who feels the most comfortable working on X, Y, and Z? So for example, like Morgan and Matthew felt really comfortable working with a SQL database in that part of the back end. And Ty and Brian and Adam were working on the front end because they just felt more comfortable with that material. So that really helped us to get things going a lot faster. Oh, well, that were some of the... Oh, go ahead. You could say something. Oh, I'm reading something right here.
00:11:39
Speaker
interesting ones and I don't know if it made it into the file project or file version of what we did was we had to figure out an algorithm to encrypt our data. That was actually a really interesting thing to do because what we wanted to try to do was regardless of the language of what was being typed in, it would be encrypted on our end in
00:12:09
Speaker
so they could put an innocuous text in. No one would see an English language on their phone whatsoever. And it would come into our database as their language. But on our end, it would be an innocuous text that would match up to the database we know who we're talking about.
Challenges in Integration and Lessons Learned
00:12:33
Speaker
So that was an interesting integration.
00:12:40
Speaker
All I did was create the algo. But I believe it was either Ty or Morgan that was implementing it at that time. And they say I was working on the front end, but during the entire week that we were doing that, I had blown out my knee. So I was trying to relearn it on the fly. So it was actually a really interesting, interesting
00:13:09
Speaker
thing to work on. Sorry, go ahead. Sorry, I like to talk a little more about that. The real challenge was trying to connect everything because like the whole Django chat communication platform had like these sockets and had all that built-in HTTPS encryption. But then our front end
00:13:31
Speaker
to connect to it, we weren't really sure about even how to go about that. So we're trying to figure that out on the fly. That was the part that he was talking about, how to tie it all together in a way. That ended up being probably the biggest challenge we faced. That's exactly what I was going to ask is what was the biggest challenge you guys faced? So that would be it? Well, also the simple fact that all my teammates were working on Linux or Apple. And here I am on a Windows machine trying to
00:14:00
Speaker
try to run a bin to run their virtual environments and just get errors all over the place. So I've got to try to figure out, okay, how to make my windows play nicely with Mac, which do not like to play well. Right.
00:14:20
Speaker
Yeah, I think just going off of what what Brian was saying, the partial compatibility between the different operating systems that everyone was using did make it a very interesting experience. But I will say that, you know, for pretty much
00:14:36
Speaker
all of Sunday right until deadline. The main thing that we were like, as a group, we were all focusing on was how to integrate all of our different parts together, which I personally feel was one of the most valuable learning experiences out of out of the hackathon, just learning how to connect everything. But at the same time, as previously mentioned, it definitely was one of the most challenging parts and something that we're hoping to expand on in future iterations. Well, like I was telling you guys,
00:15:06
Speaker
during that Sunday was it was it's good to get get to this troubleshooting now, because we've got a group project that has to come up in January. So we're gonna be facing these exact same problems. It's good to get them out of the way now. So we know what we're dealing with. I will also say that, you know, coming into a group challenge, and
00:15:35
Speaker
you know, kind of showing up and needing to have a framework to be able to do all this. And, you know, we haven't learned about Django until after the hackathon, you know. So, like, learning Django on the fly and
00:15:55
Speaker
and implementing everything together, I think was definitely a significant challenge. And I gotta say that the whole team were, everybody was rock stars on this stuff. Just the typical military mindset of, hey, it doesn't have to be pretty, but we're gonna do whatever it takes to make this thing work. And yeah, I'm really proud of the team for making it work.
Future Prospects and Marketability
00:16:23
Speaker
Was there anything that kind of surprised you guys as far as, you know, your overcoming obstacles right and left? I'm sure there's stuff that pops up. You're under, you know, a time limit, all the stuff that comes with just being part of a hackathon. Was there anything else in particular you guys learned or were you surprised that certain things happen the way they did? Did you have anything, you know, were you lucky at any point? I mean, did you have any kind of experiences like that?
00:16:49
Speaker
Personally, I feel like the main thing that I am sure the rest of the team were surprised by by the end was that in literally less than three days we had gone from
00:17:01
Speaker
you know, just the basic idea that we were going to work on something to a working, nearly finished product. And, you know, having gone through the brainstorming process and debugging and coming up with different ideas and so on. That, I think, just like seeing how much we were able to get done in such a short amount of time and with such high quality work to do. That, I think, was probably one of the coolest things about the Hackathon.
00:17:31
Speaker
I was happily surprised at how good the other team's presentations were. I know we were guilty of this too, looking at the initial sheet of, hey, this team is doing this project, whatever. The descriptions that were given were pretty bland. And whenever it came time for the actual end presentation, like, man,
00:17:59
Speaker
Those teams had some awesome presentations and, you know, our team did not place, but I don't feel bad about that at all because, yeah, man, there was some really high quality stuff. So what happens now? What happens with the app now?
00:18:17
Speaker
So right now, we're not really sure. We're hoping to work together and develop it into something more coherent, ideally something marketable in the near future. We're thinking about maybe working together to make this into our course final project. But regardless, the app will persevere and continue on in some form, and we're looking forward to it.
00:18:44
Speaker
Yeah, awesome. Anybody else have anything they want to add? Yeah, I mean, this was definitely a really fun project. But ideally, we want to actually be able to help folks. And, you know, this is certainly a very possible way to do that. And so, yeah, the hope is that we can take this to market and actually make an impact in people's lives. It could be pretty awesome.
00:19:14
Speaker
And I'll came from a hackathon. And this is the first time you guys have done hackathons, I think you said? Yes. Yeah, for me, yeah. That's awesome. So you never know, right? A little bit of pressure is good. Walk away with this great idea. Awesome, guys. Well, thanks for being part of the hackathon. We appreciate it. Thank you for having us. It was a lot of fun. Thank you. OK, stay where you're at.