Tech Tracker

My Role

Project lead and mentor on a team of 2

The Problem

Geering Up has over 200 laptops and a plethora of other small tech like arduinos which are all used during our summer camps season. Coordinating and securing this technology has become a full time job.

Technology frequently changes hands during a day of camps and with over 50 instructors, it can be a pain to figure out who is using something at a given time. In the past instructors would have to contact the Technology Student Assistant (Tech SA) who could look at a physical sign out sheet in order to determine who had what tech signed out. This process was exhausting for both instructors and the Tech SA being contacted.

When I worked in the Tech SA position myself in 2019, I developed an online sign in/out solution which utilized Google forms and Google sheets in order to track where things were in realtime. This solution worked, but felt clunky and there were frequently data entry errors which then had to be fixed manually.

The Solution

Now in 2022 (after two years of reduced camp sizes where this technology was not needed) it was time for a version 2 of the tech tracking software.

I pitched the idea, and then got to work with the new Tech SA on planning the project. As this was their first time doing web development, it was my responsibility to play as the senior developer for this project. This meant doing all the initial setup for the project - initializing the code framework, creating a database, and setting up hosting. I also created a skeleton version project with a few examples of database calls and displaying the data with the purpose of helping the new Tech SA, as it would become their job to finish the project.

After that initial setup, I transitioned to more of a mentor and supervisor role, where I helped with architecting data structures and assisted with debugging the program.

The project ended up being a huge success and has been used for the last 4 years as the method for tracking all of the technology at Geering Up.