You should meet Leah
Built the climate atlas you cited in your repo’s README — and is looking for design help with public data this week.
AI matchmaking for hackathons
The room already knows who you should meet.
Attendees upload more than a bio — repos, portfolios, voice notes, project plans. Openbook turns it into a shortlist of who each one should meet, with reasons.
The best introductions at your hackathon are usually invisible.
Hackathons are too short to rely on badges, directories, and Slack channels to figure out who you should meet. The right teammate, mentor, sponsor, or collaborator is often already there, but attendees need a faster way to find them.
How Openbook works at your hackathon
Stage 1
Collect context
Attendees share more than a registration form: projects, skills, goals, and the kind of help they need.
- PDF resume-2026.pdf
- FIG climate-dashboard-v2.fig
- TXT github-carbon-explorer.txt
- PPTX pitch-deck-demo-day.pptx
- M4A field-notes-voice-memo.m4a
- MD side-project-readme.md
- PNG climate-tool-wireframe.png
this is a hand-drawn sketch of the dashboard I want to build — the bottom section needs to show emissions data across cities, but I’m not sure how to handle the colour scale because the values rang
Stage 2
Process, index, match
Openbook processes each upload, indexes what people can offer or need, then makes matches across the room.
Stage 3
Give each attendee a shortlist
Each attendee gets a few introductions worth making, with a clear reason for each — not shared tags.
You should meet Priya
Priya rebuilt the Australian Bureau of Meteorology’s climate atlas in 2022. Your wireframe reuses the exact heatmap legend pattern she rejected in that project for being unreadable below 720px.
Why this match works
- You both work on public climate data.
- You said you need design help with your dashboard.
- Priya has solved the exact legend problem you’re stuck on.
Stage 4
Start with relevance
Openbook drafts the opening message and lets attendees send it via email or WhatsApp — so the first message lands instead of starting with small talk.
Contact Priya
Following up on our Openbook match
Write your message…
“Hi Priya — I was matched with you on Openbook because of your atlas redesign. I’m hitting the same legend-readability wall…”
What running Openbook looks like
None during the event — we monitor and handle attendee questions.
Upload what they already have: repos, portfolios, notes, voice memos.
Shortlists land in attendee inboxes with a reason for each match.
Free for our first hackathon partners. Hands-on support included.
Meet the team
Max
Engineer
TypeScript engineer (React, Node, generative AI). Builds Openbook’s product and event tooling.
Oliver
Researcher
Dropped out of a deep learning masters at the University of Melbourne to work in industry. Stints at AlphaBeta and Accenture; cited in peer-reviewed publications.