{"slug": "flashcrowd-predict-and-protect", "title": "FlashCrowd : Predict and Protect", "summary": "A four-person team at OxHack'26 built FlashCrowd, a system that forecasts traffic surges hours before a breaking-news event and decides how many servers to start and where. The project combines ElevenLabs for human interaction, Google Gemini API for intelligent explanation, and Snowflake Cortex for data and forecasting infrastructure.", "body_md": "*This is a submission for the [MLH x DEV Writing Challenge](https://dev.to/mlh-hackathon)*\n\nWe Built FlashCrowd! When news breaks, millions open the same page at once. We see the crowd coming hours early, then decide how many servers to start, and where.\n\n[https://18-132-176-215.sslip.io/arcade/story.html](https://18-132-176-215.sslip.io/arcade/story.html)\n\nWe used three MLH partner technologies in FLASHCROWD: ElevenLabs, Google Gemini API, and Snowflake Cortex.\n\nEach partner technology supports a different part of the product: human interaction, intelligent explanation, and data/forecasting infrastructure.\n\nWe attended OxHack'26. We started as a group of three and found our fourth teammate on the way to the event, which made the experience even more memorable.\n\nThe atmosphere was energetic, welcoming, and highly collaborative. We met lot of builders, exchanged ideas, and learned from people with different technical backgrounds. What we will remember most is the entire experience: the people we met, the time that passed while building together, and the knowledge we gained throughout the event.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/flashcrowd-predict-and-protect", "canonical_source": "https://dev.to/aravind_lochan/flashcrowd-predict-and-protect-1p9p", "published_at": "2026-10-25 10:03:56+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-10-25 10:13:51.645357+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-infrastructure", "machine-learning", "ai-tools"], "entities": ["FlashCrowd", "ElevenLabs", "Google Gemini API", "Snowflake Cortex", "OxHack'26", "MLH"], "also_reported_by": [], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/flashcrowd-predict-and-protect", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/flashcrowd-predict-and-protect.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/flashcrowd-predict-and-protect.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/flashcrowd-predict-and-protect.jsonld"}}