In January, Wilson Talent Center students, senior Nicholas Phillips along with his group members, senior Martin Miller from Williamston High School and senior Conner Pineda from Haslett High School were selected as the winners of the 2023-24 Congressional App Challenge by Michigan’s 7th district U.S. Representative Elissa Slotkin.
The Congressional App Challenge is a competition for students to show off their coding skills in the app they create. It’s organized by members of Congress for each state district and the students who are eligible to apply are middle and high schoolers throughout the country. This event was held last year from June 15 to November 1.
“We were supposed to have three months,” Phillips said. “But we ended up making our app in two weeks because our teacher forgot to tell us.”
In the limited time the group had, they were able to create the app Snack Maps.
“When we got told of it, we thought about food, and were like, ‘Yeah, this is a good idea,’” Phillips said.
Snack Maps works by using the public application programming interface (API), which is an interface provided by companies to share information. In this case, Snack Maps was able to get data about what types of snacks are available in certain stores to generate a map of the area. Currently, there is a bug in the app as the map portion keeps showing up in a random spot in Chicago.
“The map part doesn’t work yet but it should direct you to stores you want based on the snack,” Phillips said.
“We were just kinda proud because we really didn’t have much expectation of winning,” Phillips said. “Happy because it meant that we could actually put out something that was quality-ish.”
Due to winning, the group was able to go to Washington, D.C. for a two day event called the House of Code, where they present their app to other people.
In April, Philips left for D.C. for the two day event starting on April 10th. Once the group landed in Washington D.C. they were able to stay in a hotel that was funded by the Wilson Talent Center due to students being responsible for the cost of the travel.
“We went to the capitol, got through an hour of security, and displayed our app for about an hour to Facebook and Snapchat people alongside the other app winners,” Phillips said.
As they showcased their app, Philips and his group had the opportunity to meet Elissa Slotkin and demonstrate Snack Maps in action.
“She was excited because the last few years only one class had own consecutively,” Phillips said. “And this is the first year she’s gotten to meet winners in person at the capitol.”
Afterward, Philips had a chance to tour DC. Some of the places the group got to visit was the Washington Monument, the capital and a museum nearby.
“Personally I was hyped for this good fried chicken and donut place called Astro’s which had good donut and chicken sandwiches,” Phillips said. “It was kinda surprising to be honest, because I thought the capital of all places would look nice but there were rats and roaches on the first night on the street.”
