Add a chat feature

[erikthiem]

trafficstars

I recently used this as a mentor for Hack OHI/O and noticed that a large, important feature this is lacking is the ability to chat directly with the hackathon participants submitting tickets. This was an issue because there were almost a thousand participants and it was sometimes hard to find the people that submitted the ticket.

[ehzhang]

Hi! This was a conscious design choice: https://github.com/ehzhang/HELPq#encourage-in-person-interaction

I made this decision originally so that mentors couldn't chat online and offer mentorship remotely. For most hackathons, I would recommend that ticket submitters provide enough information to identify themselves, or risk not getting help. From a logistics standpoint, this can fall on the hackathon organizers to make sure that their spaces are easy to navigate and well labeled.

[erikthiem]

@ehzhang That reasoning makes sense to me. Perhaps this was more the fault of the specific hackathon organizers than anything else.