The Story Behind This Demo
Why this app exists
Two years of living at Raffles Residences Boston taught me one thing before anything else: residents want community. So does the person writing this. So I built a demo to see what software could do about it.
Unit 22H
The same conversation, over and over
I've lived here for two years. At dinners, in the elevator, at events in the Residents' Lounge, one topic keeps coming back no matter who I'm talking to: residents want to feel more connected to each other, to the staff who take such good care of us, and to the building itself. I want that too.
I'm also, by nature and by trade, a nerd who codes for fun. So instead of just agreeing over another glass of wine, I built this: a fully working demo of what an intranet for a residence like ours could look like: concierge requests, amenity bookings, a resident directory, governance ballots, a marketplace, a gratitude board for staff, even a simulated bridge into the hotel's own systems. Everything you can click on this site actually works (or if it doesn't, tell me!)
It's not affiliated with Raffles, Accor, or the real building's management; it's an independent, self-funded side project, built and paid for on my own time, to explore one question honestly: could a well-built app make everyone here (staff, residents, and the community around them) a little happier? I think the answer is yes.
What's actually inside
What this demo does
Ask for anything, and know it landed
Housekeeping, valet, a guest arrival, a security concern: lodge it with the concierge desk and get an on-screen receipt, not just a hope that an email went through. A dedicated security-alert button, styled to stand apart from ordinary navigation, sits in the footer of every page for anything that can't wait.
A directory that asks first
Every resident decides, room by room, whether to be listed and whether neighbours can reach them directly. Nothing is visible by default; community should never come at the cost of privacy.
Community, on purpose
Interest circles, a marketplace for favours and recommendations, a gratitude board for the staff who make the place feel like home: the small threads that turn a building into neighbours.
A real voice in how the building runs
Board measures, live ballots, and the governing documents in one place; one vote per residence, counted transparently.
The hotel side, simplified
A simulated bridge into the hotel's own staff-facing systems (folios, priority tables, in-residence delivery): the same backend hotel operations run on, opened up here so residents can see what a genuinely connected residence-hotel experience could feel like.
The management side, made lighter
A private personnel dashboard, a monthly resident-happiness survey scored and charted for the board, and a running record of the thanks residents leave for the staff: three small tools built so whoever is keeping the building running spends less time chasing paper and more of it on the building itself.
Built to hold up, not just look nice
Session handling, accessibility (WCAG 2.2 AA), including type weight tuned for legibility against the site's quiet, thin editorial display font, and automated visual, unit and accessibility checks run against this codebase the same way they would for a production product.
Who built it
Meet Ashley Romano
- AI + Innovation Leader
- Harvard & Boston University
- Liberty Mutual TechStart alum
- 3 patents pending
- Google · IBM · Anthropic AI certified
- MIT Innovation & Technology
By day, I'm a Co-Founder (Technical) + President of a pre-launch social platform built against the attention economy. I lead a 25-person team, wrote the company's founder-adopted AI Governance Playbook and Moderation Governance Policies, thought up an alternative revenue model, came up with platform features to set us apart from legacy social media, direct the Dev team, GTM, and Fundraising strategy, and still ship production code myself in TypeScript, React Native, and C#/.NET most weeks.
I didn't take the usual road here. After years of Literature + Language studies at Boston and Harvard University, which led to my first career in Proofreading, Editing, and Academic Publishing, my entrepreneurial aspirations eventually landed me in General Assembly's Full-stack Immersive Bootcamp, sparking the start of my second career as a Software Developer. To my shock, I was selected for Liberty Mutual's FAANG-competitive TechStart software engineering apprenticeship, which then led to my first professional coding roles shipping real production code in Liberty's Investments and Legal Strategic Services corporate business units. The legal work stuck: just this year I went on to author four proprietary access-to-justice algorithms for a legaltech startup, three of which are now under provisional patent.
Curiosity about AI pulled me into the Boston Google Developer Group and Gemini certifications, then IBM and Anthropic AI certifications, alongside an MIT Innovation and Technology certificate. On the side, I do AI benchmarking task work for a Stanford-backed startup, which keeps my skills sharp and my humility sharper.
I mentor women and anyone entering tech, and I run my team on a fail-forward rule I apply to myself first: break things, admit it, laugh, learn. That team-oriented style was ingrained in me long before I ever wrote a line of code: as a USRowing National Champion as a junior rower, and later as an NCAA Division I rower for BU. In rowing as in coding, teamwork is everything + there's no room for egos; there's always something to learn, and definitely always time for a laugh. My mistakes are the only reason I know anything, which I find particularly funny.
I'm a former SAT teacher, the designated talker for a giant multi-generational family, and once the face of an open-source developer community with 15,000+ members. In enterprise engineering, I am consistently chosen to cross-functionally present sprint reviews to 100+ stakeholders, making sure engineers and executives were actually speaking the same language. I've spoken at Liberty Mutual's Women in Tech and TechStart programs about my path into software, in a style I'd describe as practical, energetic, and just funny enough to keep a room of engineers awake after lunch. Beyond software, I volunteer with animal, environmental, sports, and neighbourhood organizations across Boston, Paradise Valley, AZ, Concord, MA, and Nantucket. This year, volunteering at the Waste Management Golf Tournament really took the cake! Usually, you can find me enjoying time with my family, equestrian activities, nightlife, sports, thrift and antique shopping, socializing, exploring, and most probably, learning something new, no matter how obscure.
And, most of the time, I live at Raffles Residences Boston in Unit 22H with my border collie, Smith, which is where this app's particular idea formed and became reality.
The philosophy behind the build
Ashley's motto
"AI + Tech are one of humanity's greatest advances; let's learn it, experiment with it, + apply it so we change what's going on right now, until it helps over harms humans + their communities, and so it loses its currently bad rap, and instead gives way to even greater emotional, physical, spiritual, + financial gain for Earth's inhabitants."
Just Say No to the Status Quo!
Say hello, ask a question, or file a bug
I built this alone, on my own time; I'd genuinely love to hear what you think of it.
built with 🤍 in Raffles Residences Boston, Unit 22H by Ashley Romano, 2026