Fall In - Hackathon Helping Homeless Veterans

"Fall In" is a veterans hackathon organization focused on propelling service members, past or present in the tech industry. Fall In was founded during the COVID-19 pandemic by Jameel Matin. He mentored Veterans trying to get into software engineering and directed them to join hackathons. With the lack of virtual hackathons, Jameel decided to take the lead and start hosting them himself. He initially started off on another platform called Kumospace before moving to Frame. He didn't want to use traditional online meeting spaces like Zoom or Google Meets as they were not immersive or engaging enough. That's when he discovered Frame. He enjoys the virtual environment, sharing capabilities and spatial audio features that Frame offers. This Hackathon featured a large group of veterans and guest speakers including Andrew Bustamante, an ex-CIA Covert Officer. The participants were able to enter as an individual or with a group, and anyone that went alone was broken off into a team with the goal of creating a new and unique application. One product that came out of this was a platform that would allow veterans, regardless of where they were in their life, to have easy access to a mentor willing to help.