The beginning

While working as a research assistant at UTEC in Lima, I met Ivonne Montes, who presented me with the opportunity to lead a team to develop the ebus-lima2022.com platform. The job consisted in working for a few months under a contract with the IRD (Institut de Recherche pour le Développement) to create the desired web platform in charge of presenting relevant information to the attendees and allowing the possibility of submitting abstracts, sessions, and relevant information.

Requirements

The web organization committee, confirmed by researchers Ivonne Montes, François Colas, and Dimitri Gutiérrez, explained the requirements. They were looking for a platform that could handle informative pages about the scope of the conference, schedule, general information, organizing committee, sponsors, and outcomes, among others. Additionally, they required personalized forms for collecting the call for sessions and abstract submissions. We will discuss the special requirements in the next section.

The conference forms

The two forms required some elaborate features. They needed to have the possibility to add n authors (composed each with an email, name, and institution), apart from general information like the specific abstract or format of the session. And after the primary author finishes registering the form, an email address confirming the reception should be sent to all of the authors.

Technology used

Given some sophistication in the requirements, we opt to develop the app as a NextJS (react) project. As our backend service, we used the built-in API routes provided by NextJS. And for persisting the data, we used MongoDB Altlas and Mongoose. Additionally, for sending the confirmation email to all the authors and our department, we used a mail service provided by SendGrid.