The 'tinder' like app for voting #SecondAdventure
At The Shoulder Tap event at Auckland University with Brooke Howard-Smith
In June 2014 I was among more than 1,000 people that applied for The Shoulder Tap – a campaign run by tech entrepreneur Derek Handley to find a second-in-charge in his crusade to unite capitalism and social good. Here is a video about Shoulder Tap.
“The lessons I learnt were; apply for it, put your hand up to do it, even if you think there is no chance of getting it”
My dad was watching Paul Henry one morning and saw Derek talking about this shoulder tap thing and said I should apply. I remember thinking, no way would I even be considered for this. But I looked up the application online and there wasn't too much to it. Before I knew it I got an email saying that I was in the top 100 and that I needed to submit an idea to solve a problem! Introducing Candidate. I needed to make a video and presentation about the idea within 24 hours... this same 24 hours I had a take home Equity Law Exam to do... bad timing to say the least. But I did it anyway. Put the call out for someone to film me and made the most amateur video. See it here.
So I got an email a few days later saying I wasn't one of the finalist for Derek's job but that I was invited to Auckland to attend the event where the job would be given. However as a student, a poor student, I was not going to pay for flight from Christchurch to Auckland to go. But then... literally three days before the event this lovely lady Dale gave me a call and said that they would pay because I was one of three finalists to receive a seperate $10,000 grant to make my idea happen! I couldn't believe it! My amateur video, talking about tinder just might win me 10k!
To cut a long story short I won the 10k and it was all a white lie about being one of three, they knew I was the winner but didn't want to tell me until it was announced on the night. I met with Derek the next day and was overwhelmed with how much support and guidance he was offering to get this idea off the ground and ready to implement for the election!
Basically the problem we were trying to solve sparked from the general election approaching and youth voter turnout predicted to be at an all time low, the problem I tackled was that 60% of young people didn’t vote in the 2011 election.
My idea was the web-based application ‘Candidate’ which won me a $10,000 grant from The Derek Handley Foundation but I won much more than that. Over the next two months I worked with an incredible team, and mentoring me each step of the way was Derek, who provided vital insight and knowledge on how to get a new tech idea off the ground.
Candidate is a web-based app that helped the user find a ‘date’ for the 2014 general election. Candidate was designed to give the user a first impression of party policies across nine issues that matter to young people, and get them interested enough to find out more prior to the election. Based on the very popular dating app ‘Tinder’, the user is shown a number of policy statements that have come directly from the political parties to ensure an unbiased view. The user swipes left to disagree or right to agree with the statement; the user is then matched with the political party that best suits them based on the polices surveyed. Candidate was launched one month prior to the election and had over 14,500 users over that time. See the Launch Party video here.
I plan to get the Candidate app back up and running for the next New Zealand general election, so will be sourcing funding and a team to help me do so.