So What Exactly is Saberchat?

By Kabir Samsi and Siddharth Chavan

You might have recently heard of this new thing called Saberchat, and you might not be quite sure what it is. Don’t worry, because we’re going to answer all your questions in this article.

Saberchat is a student-run organization that serves as the Alsion community’s official online platform. We aim to introduce the world of software development to our school, creating an environment where students from all disciplines—computer science, art, business, and more—can apply their interests to build quality content that brings our school closer together. 

The Saberchat Homepage

Saberchat began as a collaborative project between five Early College students and has now blossomed into Alsion’s central online platform. The website has numerous features including a preorder system for the No Left Turn Cafe, a streamlined tutoring center, and a student project bulletin.

Roles and Positions

Core Team

Team Lead: Kabir Samsi

Tech Lead: Alexander Zhou

Engineering and Design Lead: Siddharth Chavan

IT Lead: Dmitry Pleshkov

Marketing Lead: Vibhav Darsha

Interns

Design Interns: Ananya Chittibabu, Moksh Paniker

Engineering Intern: Anish Dhamija

Business Development Interns: Anya Patri, Armaan Sharma

Marketing/Finance Intern: Arnav Nim

Diagram of our departments and their relations

At Saberchat, we have several departments in a model resembling the diagram above. At the center of our organization is management, which links all departments together. Management works closely with Business Development, Marketing, and Finance to form the core of Saberchat’s operations team. The Design department focuses on user experience and synthesizing new feature ideas, and the Engineering department works to bring these ideas into reality and ensure that everything runs smoothly.

Our Work Structure

Saberchat is updated in monthly releases, which include bug fixes, new features, and additional functionalities. We follow professional software development practices, developing features in small increments following the below diagram:

The Saberchat development process

New Ventures

We are constantly rolling out new features to improve our platform and provide services for the Alsion community. Our most recent major release was the Saberchat Cafe System, which enables students to buy food from the Early College cafe by placing orders through the site. An online balance is used instead of real money, refining the ordering process and eliminating the COVID-19 health risks of using real cash.

Saberchat Cafe System

We are now working towards further streamlining our ordering process, and increasing ease of access and communication. Additionally, we are preparing for the release of two more major features: an updated project bulletin and a tutoring center, both of which will further contribute to our goal of improving the Alsion community.

How To Join Us

As we move back to in-person learning, we are taking steps to expand our organization and introduce new members. We are delighted to announce that we have been joined by six new interns from across both Early College and Middle School (see our “Interns” list).  We emphasize learning by doing, meaning that no experience is needed – our aim is for students to hone their passions by applying them to projects.

If you are interested, please don’t hesitate to sign up for a position with us! To do so, contact saberchat@alsionschool.org. We will send you an application to fill out, and reach out to you shortly after.