Hack for LA

This idea would be more of a proof of concept and would need additional resources / partnerships to become a reality outside of the hackaton. Create an facial recognition app that allows for donating to homeless individuals. Instead of taking out your wallet to hand over cash to a person in need, someone could open the app, take a photo and select how much they would like to give to that individual. Ideally the homeless individual would sign up at a local shelter and be able to cash out their account anytime at a participating shelter. Three goals: 1) Create a safer way to give money to someone in need. 2) Create another service / reason for homeless individuals to visit and engage with local shelters 3) Everyone who contributes takes a second to look homelessness in the face. I love the concept of people taking a photo, doing good and starting to recognize homelessness rather than just walking by staring in the other direction. I can also see lots of potential for corporate matching / sponsorships and well as giving artists access to the photos to create public awareness pieces ideally around the city. My hackathon goal would be to make the MVP / proof of concept that allows for facial recognition and a basic donation interface. Will do a little more research, but currently looking into Lambda for facial recog (https://www.mashape.com/lambda/face-recognition/pricing#!pricing) and Stripe API for donations. Open to lots of ideas!!

Create a simple app where people can report water waste (broken sprinklers, etc) to the city with two clicks. Community members who download the app also pick an area in their community (ie: near the home or work) and get notified of the water waste problem near them. That way it's someone they have a relationship with they can make sure they are aware of the water wasting problem or help the city with vetting the reports.

I've been working on curating companies that are treating their employees exceptionally and/or doing incredible things (http://awesomework.org). Before the hack-a-thon I'm going to open up an API of all these curated companies and events in LA and work to create an interactive map so people can easily identify the #socent hotspots and discover ways to connect & network with the people who work with these organizations to build relationships towards getting awesome jobs.