Dex – Building the Brain of Global Innovation

This repository contains a completely self‑contained web application that implements the core features of Dex, a tool for exploring and understanding innovation ecosystems. It combines the data and functionality from the original dex_site_final.zip with a refreshed user interface inspired by CharlestonHacks. The site can be served directly from GitHub Pages or any static web host and requires no build step.

Features

• Persona‑driven experience – choose from Founder, Investor, University Tech Transfer, or Service Provider personas. Dex personalises alerts, dashboards and suggestions based on your role.

• Interactive force‑directed graph – visualises organisations and people along with their relationships. Nodes are glowing dots whose colours correspond to their role (startups, investors, universities, incubators, service providers or individuals). Their size scales modestly with importance, and you can drag any node to reposition it if you wish to rearrange the layout. Connections between nodes are coloured according to the relationship (investment, spin‑out, support, service, consulting or shared interest) and pulsate softly. A clustering algorithm organises nodes into logical groups so that the layout remains legible even with cross‑links between categories. The graph supports pan/zoom. Clicking on a node opens a detailed panel with description, external links, photo and note taking. Clicking on a connection reveals how the entities are related and provides shortcuts to explore each one.

• Clickable synapses – the connections between nodes (links) are interactive. Selecting a link (either by clicking directly on the glowing line or by clicking near it) reveals contextual information about how two entities are related and provides quick navigation to either endpoint.

• Watchlist and notes persistence – add organisations to your personal watchlist and record notes. Data is persisted locally using localStorage by default. Optionally, you can configure Supabase to sync watchlists and notes in the cloud and support user registration via magic‑link authentication. See the Supabase configuration section below.

• Alerts and ordered suggestions – persona‑specific alerts highlight recent news and events in the ecosystem. A recommendation engine ranks other entities to explore based on graph connectivity, shared interests, popularity and your current watchlist. The suggestions panel explains why each entity is recommended and orders them so you know who to contact first.

• Starry backdrop and modern UI – the design takes visual cues from CharlestonHacks, with a dark, starry background and clean panels. A theme toggle lets you switch between light and dark modes. Glowing, pulsing nodes and lines echo the feel of a neural network or galaxy cluster, making the experience both informative and visually engaging.

• Community member photos – each organisation or community member can include an image_url in data.js or your CSV export. When available, Dex displays this photo in the details panel alongside the description. The images inherit the glow colour of their node for consistency.

Running the application

No build step is required. To run the app locally, simply open index.html in a modern browser:

firefox index.html
# or
chromium index.html

To deploy to GitHub Pages, place the contents of the dex_site_updated directory at the root of your gh-pages branch. Ensure that the repository settings point to the correct branch and folder. Since all dependencies are bundled and loaded from CDNs, the site will work without any server‑side code.

Loading your community CSV

To include additional people in the graph and suggestion engine, place your community export CSV in the project root. Dex will attempt to load Community.csv first and will fall back to the legacy filename Supabase Snippet Community Data Retrieval.csv if present. Each row should contain at least:

• Name – the person’s name (required).
• Role or Company – used to infer the type (startup, investor, university, incubator or service provider).
• Description – a short bio or summary.
• Interests – a semicolon, comma or pipe‑separated list of topics.
• Image or Photo – URL to a profile picture (optional).

When the CSV is present, Dex parses it on startup and adds a new node for every person. Shared interests between people and organisations create new “interest” connections in the graph. Photos appear in the details panel if an image URL is provided. If the CSV is missing or cannot be parsed, Dex silently falls back to the built‑in sample data.

Pulling community data from Supabase

If you have configured Supabase (see below) and your database includes a table named community, Dex will fetch rows from that table in addition to or instead of the CSV. Each row should contain at minimum:

• id (UUID) – unique identifier used as the node ID.
• name (text) – the person’s full name.
• bio (text) – a short biography used as the node description.
• interests (array of text) – topics to match against existing organisations; shared interests create interest links.
• image_url (text) – URL to a profile picture (optional).

Additional columns such as endorsements (integer) are used to scale the node size; columns x and y are ignored. Any other fields remain unused but can be incorporated by modifying loadCommunityData() in app.js.

If both a CSV and a Supabase table are present, Dex merges their results and deduplicates nodes where possible.

Supabase configuration

Dex supports optional cloud persistence via Supabase. To enable it:

1. Create a Supabase project and note the Project URL and Anon Public Key from the project settings.
2. Define two tables in your Supabase database:
   • watchlists with columns user_id (UUID), node_id (text), name (text) and type (text). Create a composite unique constraint on (user_id, node_id).
   • notes with columns user_id (UUID), node_id (text) and note (text). Create a composite unique constraint on (user_id, node_id).
3. Edit index.html and set window.SUPABASE_URL and window.SUPABASE_ANON_KEY to your project URL and anon key.
4. When you load the site, you will be prompted for your email address. Supabase will send a magic link for passwordless login.

If the Supabase variables are left empty, Dex falls back to using localStorage and will not prompt for authentication.

To‑do and future improvements

This version of Dex implements the core concepts outlined in the presentation, but there is plenty of room to expand. Future enhancements might include:

• Realtime data ingestion – integrate with public and private data sources to ingest new organisations, funding rounds and news in realtime.
• Advanced analytics and machine learning – replace the simple suggestion scoring function with predictive models that recommend connections, opportunities or risks based on user behaviour and graph structure.
• User profiles and sharing – allow users to curate custom dashboards, share watchlists and collaborate with team members.
• Rich link metadata – expand the link objects to include relationship types (e.g. “funded”, “mentored”, “collaborated”) and surface this context in the connection panel.
• Accessibility improvements – audit the site for WCAG compliance, add keyboard navigation and ARIA attributes.

We welcome contributions and ideas! Please open issues or pull requests with suggestions for improvements.