LG Scheduler helps lifeguards find and trade shifts. The City of Austin hires hundreds of lifeguards every season. The guards are new and while they provide availability times the may be under scheduled, over scheduled and having to deal with a conflict that arises. Once scheduled guards are responsible for finding their replacements without any effective means. Words of mouth is uncertain and blind texts or emails to people you may not really know is ineffective. This app improves the technology available to Guards to get shifts covered. This app creates a community for lifeguards to share information, post shift information and begin a dialog about who might cover what shift. This will still need to by approved by the pool manager, but the harder part will have been done. Furthermore, this can be used by the city, or aquatics, to reach this community and share information about inviting a friend to be a lifeguard, new city skills requirements, and other valuable information. Additionally, this contributes to public safety by helping ensure the complete staffing of pools.
LG Scheduler is not the next snapchat, but it is a focused purpose built app. Much like wordpress made website building easier the app next generation is about communities and purpose built apps. App building is much easier today and the tools allow anyone to build apps their community needs.
I am a team of one but have great tools and partners with me. I know the managers at several pools and have positive relationships with each, so I can work with them to implement this as a tool. I know several coding languages and I already have a working prototype here:
http://blxm.io/oCD8G6eb.
The City of Austin does an outstanding job of reaching the community all across the city to find lifeguards. Most guards have mobile phone and use apps so this is a natural way to reach and communicate. Email use by younger guards is much less frequent than app use and an app specific to their lifeguard schedule could be tremendously beneficial.
The prize money will go toward my time to develop new functionality and work with others to distribute the app compliant with the needs of the city and how best to benefit guards.
