BubbleCon 2023 Hackathon Winners and Event Wrap-Up

To close out BubbleCon, Josh and Emmanuel announced the three winners and three superlative nominees from the #BubbleCon2023 hackathon — the theme of which was “Bubble for Good.” Catch the replay below.

Speakers: 

• Emmanuel Straschnov, co-founder and co-CEO
• Josh Haas, co-founder and co-CEO

Meet the honorees and winners

Before announcing the top three winners, Josh made some special shoutouts in three superlative “just for fun” categories:

• Best Design award: NeutraLife by Shiku W., an app designed to help users monitor and mitigate their carbon footprint.
• Most Unique award: MindtheBet by Vini P., a gambling habit tracker to help users manage their money and time. 
• Pushing Limits award: Private Gallery by Andrew C., a tool for Web3 artists to create a private chat and gallery experience to share their work.

Next, Emmanuel took the stage to share the winning apps in the Rookie, Veteran, and Professional Developer categories. 

Bubble Rookies Winner: Aanya Shah, creator of DoubleKarma

High-schooler Aanya, who taught herself Bubble over her summer vacation and now creates tutorial videos on her YouTube channel called ​​@originalstrokes, took home the prize in the Rookies category. Aanya was inspired by the work of her great-grandmother’s charity work in Ambala, India. “I wanted to bring this to the masses,” she says. DoubleKarma works like this: a user sponsors a charity by placing an order with a local vendor who then carries out the delivery. The charity receives a donation like food or supplies, and the vendor earns money while fulfilling the request. The aptly named web app hinges on its integrations with Stripe, email, and WhatsApp. “One of the key components of this application is the WhatsApp integration,” she explains in her demo. “It also happens to be the part that I’m most proud of. I had never set up a webhook before and I had to learn how to do that.”

Watch Aanya’s demo in full below:

Bubble Veterans Winner: Daniel Nylander, creator of SOUSIE

Daniel Nylander’s AI-powered sous chef, SOUSIE, won first place in the Bubble Veterans category (for those who have been building on Bubble for more than one year). The Sweden-based developer is also currently working on ORKAI, a fitness app for both web and mobile. His hackathon app pairs well with that mission; SOUSIE’s goal is to bring a level of fun and convenience to healthy eating. Using the OpenAI API, SOUSIE generates a recipe based on the user’s requests — including servings, allergens, and factors like creativity. Daniel also incorporated a community element into SOUSIE, which allows users to save, comment, and rate recipes. While building, Daniel experimented with a number of features, including parsing data from OpenAI and different ways of creating and displaying data. This experiment proved successful: It made his app “more lightweight, which I could also really tell sped up the process” explains Daniel.

Check out his demo:

Professional Developer Winner: Daryl Jacob, creator of Serenity Sprout

In the Professional Developer category, Daryl Jacob’s Serenity Sprout grabbed the top spot. Serenity Sprout is a mental health check-in app designed for kids. As a clinician, Daryl says he sees the impact of COVID-19 on kids’ mental health. “We want to find ways to teach them coping strategies when they get emotional,” he explains. When a user logs on to the app, they select a feeling they resonate with most. Based on their response, they receive a response and suggestions for a self-care activity like playing outside or practicing deep breathing. Every time they log a feeling, the user receives a seed to plant in a virtual community garden. “I really wanted to focus on user experience,” says Daryl. Because of the younger target audience, that meant focusing on visuals and tone.

Watch his demo video below:

Congratulations to all of our Bubble for Good Hackathon winners!