THON

THON is a student-run philanthropy committed to enhancing the lives of children and families impacted by childhood cancer. Our mission is to provide emotional and financial support, spread awareness, and ensure funding for critical research—all in pursuit of a cure.

I am going into my fourth year as a THON Volunteer. The first two years, I was on Rules & Regulations committees, providing security for various THON events throughout the year.

Dash

Last year, I was a Dash Developer on the Technology Committee. Dash is our event management system, primarily used THON Weekend. It tracks building capacity, floor admittance, dancer wellness, and now we can track the state of our fire exits! The last one is a project I completed on short notice before THON Weekend.

Fire Exits

A week before THON, we were given a project by Rules & Regulations to move the Exit Safety Binder from using a physical binder to Dash. I worked with one of my Co-Captains to make a four page Vue form, a table to display the results, and another table to display all completed forms across the entire weekend. I would have examples of my work, but I have lost access to Dash.

A11y

A11y, short for accessability, is the idea that websites are accessable for anyone to use. We suffered from a variety of a11y problems on Dash. I used Lighthouse to audit all 120 webpages on Dash. The site had a variety of issues preventing screen readers from being used effectively. I used the recommendations from Lighthouse to completely overhaul the look and functionality of Dash's frontend to become more compliant with WICAG AA standards.

Special Projects

This year, I am the Lead Special Projects Developer. I am responsible for three other developers to maintain and improve on three of THON's websites; Quizzes, POST, and Warewolf.

Quizzes

Quizzes is our testing platform. We have a few quizzes to ensure volunteers understand the THON Rulebook and any rules relevant to THON Weekend. Dash and THINK, the THON Information NetworK, talk to Quizzes using custom APIs to ensure all volunteers and spectators take the required quizzes.

POST

POST, or Point Of Sale Technology, is our register for in person THON events. It handles transactions and the fulfillment of online orders, as well as handling analytical data related to our sales.

Warewolf

Warewolf is our inventory management system. It is brand new, and slowly becoming fully integrated with the THON Community. POST constantly communicates with Warewolf using custom APIs. Warewolf is just used for Merchandise currently, but we are rolling it out to more committees as is grows.