Common Ground - Find Local Community, Make Friends

Project Description

Common Ground is a web app that helps people discover local communities by automatically connecting users with others who share their interests and live in their local area.

This project was completed during the South Florida Hackathon 2025 "Hack for South Florida".

Motivation / Problem

In this day and age, building meaningful local connections is harder than ever. While existing apps (Meetup, Facebook Groups, Discord, etc.) provide ways to organize events, they each have bottlenecks that hinder the user experience in making connections.

Proposed Solution

Common Ground automatically creates communities based on users’ selected interests and geographic proximity. Instead of forcing people to search endlessly for groups, our app builds tailored spaces where friendships and collaboration can thrive.

Key Characteristics

• Web application
• User-friendly registration
• Database of users, events, and groups
• Automatic group creation based on interests

How to Run

1. Download the repo as a .zip.
2. Decompress the .zip folder.
3. cd to this folder.
4. Run pnpm run dev or pnpm run build.
5. View the program on http://localhost:5173.

Used Technologies

• The backend:
  • Go
  • MongoDB
• The brontend:
  • JavaScript
  • React
  • Vite
• Design:
  • Figma
• AI:
  • Copilot
  • ChatGPT

Future Work / Next Steps

• Matchmake users based on factors like gender and age.
• Expand event planning features.
• Implement event notifications for users.
• Develop richer social features, such as chat and message boards.
• Verify events and locations.
• Explore monetization strategies (e.g., ads, partnerships).
• Create a product logo.

Team

• Emilio Bautista: Contributed to frontend and backend features, API connection.
• Ethan Landers: Wrote project documentation, contributed to ideation, pitched project.
• Frank Roberge: Built backend services in Go, integrated with MongoDB.
• Michael Cartagena: Drafted project slides, contributed to ideation, ensured project delivery.

Acknowledgement

Thank you to South Florida Tech Hub, City Furniture, FPL, NextEra, Rebecca Bakels, Imran Siddiqui, Ashton Adler, and all the volunteers and coaches for hosting the 2025 South Florida Hackathon and providing invaluable opportunities for learning and support.