Tell us about your background. Have you coded before, or do you have other skills that you hope to use during the hackathon weekend? (900 chars)
Here’s my programming journey: When I got my first laptop in 11th grade, I enrolled in a Java course just to explore the capabilities of my laptop. Programming felt magical. I felt so much joy and meaning from building useful tools just by typing
In first year, I started solving problems around me: a site that helps you journal like audiopen.ai for my first hackathon, then a scraper for psych students to track seat openings in my first year of university. I built it in a month, shared it with my class, and got 100+ signups. That was my first taste of full-stack development, and creating real impact with code Second year (2022), launched https://sniptube.vercel.app/ Third year, 20-month IBM internship (2023): https://youtu.be/GYXxsKJE-8I Forth year (2024-5): Exo & Orbit Throughout that journey, I of course built several side projects in my freetime & hackathons
Write about a time when you worked in a team. What were your strengths and weaknesses? What role did you play?
I’ll just share a reference one of my Orbit teammates wrote for me “he is easily one of the most knowledgeable and proficient peers I have met. He has a lot of experience building his own projects, and through hackathons that I always feel confident in asking for his help Rami is very driven and works hard. Building Orbit, he continuously worked harder than expected, building the entire backend of the app himself. Rami also goes out of his way to support the rest of the team, whether that’s helping someone understand a complex part of the codebase or jumping in to fix a tough bug that wasn’t his to solve I can attest to this from a first-hand point of view. As long as I have known Rami, he’s had a way of clearly communicating his ideas and goals in a way that motivates those around him, myself included. Rami’s passion is contagious, which makes a real difference on any team he’s part of”
What draws you to hackathons, and how do you hope HackMIT will help you grow?
Maybe meet my cofounder for Orbit in there. There’s no better & faster test for a cofounder than hackathons. We would EASILY figure out if we’re compatible. Of course the chances of that happening is quite low. The other reason I enjoy hackathons is because I use it to validate an idea I’d like to pursue more seriously. I use it as a way to get some feedback on the MVP version and see if there’s potential in the idea and technology behind it
There are so many use cases for AI Agents these days. I would like to explore these different use cases people are discovering. Especially given that we would have sponsors building companies around AI in there. I’m excited to talk to them and build on top of them.
I’d love to explore the MIT vibe in terms of entrepreneurship. I have seen SF, Berkeley, Stanford, LA, Toronto, Waterloo. Now I’d love to visit Massachusetts and see the vibes there
Share a project that you’re proud of, technical or non-technical!
Over this past year, I have spent over 800 hours working on 2 mobile apps—Exo and Orbit. These 2 open-source applications & community represents everything that I stand for: using technology to reduce the barrier to human connection. Exo helps people have better conversations with their partners and friends. Then nine months ago, I started working on another app that aims to fight loneliness in university
Orbit: https://www.linkedin.com/company/getorbitapp Orbit’s community: https://discord.gg/m9mWXcrstw Exo: https://getexo.vercel.app/ Orbit Manifesto: https://youtu.be/vaBTLpGfVQE demo: https://youtu.be/QI8HgFye-m0 My university reached out to me to write an article & video about me:
- https://rami-maalouf.tech/uc-orbit-article
- https://rami-maalouf.tech/uc-orbit-vid
- https://photos.app.goo.gl/V2BrX1nzapNhVq7RA
- It led to a local news feature: https://rami-maalouf.tech/livewire