I have always wanted to work on a business of my own, and after thinking a lot about it over the last year, I decided to start working on a platform that I am calling TechPrism.
The idea for TechPrism came when searching for hackathons on various platforms. There are a lot of platforms that list hackathons but not many list tech conferences, and none of them provides a platform for techies to collaborate. Therefore with TechPrism, we aim to create a unified platform for all things tech.
We started architecture discussions in January of 2023 and began work on the mobile application by the Mid of the same month. To develop the mobile application, we used Flutter, an open-source, cross-platform mobile application development framework from Google. We used AstraDB, a DBAAS (Database as a Service) from DataStax as our primary database, and used in-memory caching for the chat services. For building the APIs (Application Program Interface) we used Django, a Python framework for building rest-APIs and we used Django Channels for chat service sockets.
Why Flutter?
Since we are a three-member team, it would have been challenging to develop both the Android and IOS applications natively therefore we chose Flutter. Flutter is a cross-platform framework and thus allows to build the Android and IOS applications with the same code base. Another reason for choosing Flutter was that it is relatively easy to build applications with the framework and it supports a lot of open-source plugins.
Overall Experience
During this project, I worked on the mobile application that would be available on the Google Play Store & the Apple App Store and also worked on the backend. Working on a business venture, I discovered how building applications with cross-platform technologies like Flutter saves time and cost for an organisation. I learnt about the various challenges of creating a successful business venture and the importance of having a passionate team. Overall, it was a great experience.
I would like to thank all the people that worked along with me for their patience and openness. The team created an enjoyable working environment. It is indeed with a great sense of pleasure and immense sense of gratitude that I acknowledge the help of these individuals.
Way Forward
Over the past three and a half months, we have completed the work on some of the core application modules. We are currently working on integrating all these modules and getting the alpha-stage application feedback from a small test group.
Over the past three and a half months, we have completed the work on some of the core application modules. We are currently working on integrating all these modules and getting the alpha-stage application feedback from a small test group. Based on the feedback received, we will make the needed alterations and will release the application for a wider user base. We would also want to try and raise funds for quickly scaling up operations and adding more features.