Catalyst Hackathon (Festival of Innovation)

[GENERAL] Name and Surname of Main Applicant

Benjamin Ben Zvi

[GENERAL] Email address of Main Applicant

benzvibenjamin@gmail.com

Additional Applicants

Liam Bodin

[GENERAL] Please specify how many months you expect your project to last (from 2-12 months)

8

[GENERAL] Please indicate if your proposal has been auto-translated into English from another language.

No

[GENERAL] Does your project have any dependencies on other organizations, technical or otherwise?

Yes

[GENERAL] If YES, please describe what the dependency is and why you believe it is essential for your project’s delivery. If NO, please write “No dependencies.” .

We have a dependency on the organizers of the Open Geneva "Festival of open innovation", but we already discussed with them and they would be really happy to have us in their event.

[GENERAL] Will your project outputs be fully Open Source?

Yes

[GENERAL] If NO, please describe which outputs are not going to be open source. If YES, please write “Project will be fully open source.”

Project will be fully open source

[METADATA] Category of proposal

Events

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

The students have a lack of understanding and exposure to the Blockchain world, that is in our opinion a problem from the closed minds that we have in education worldwide.

Benjamin, one of the proposers, has already made some educational proposals for fund 9, the experience he got from it helped him understand a lot of details about the behavior of the students with a subject they find complicated to understand.

Most of the students didn’t even want to learn about the subject since they think it is out of their league, they know a little bit about the subject but have a really hard time to know where to start, what to learn and where to learn, which is in our opinion a problem in modern education.

In order to solve this issue, we want to organize a Hackathon, which is a challenge where the participants have to find solutions to given problems in 24 hours. 

We are going to organize a Hackathon dedicated to the adoption of Blockchain in the education of the students. 

We already had a few questions in mind : 

• How to integrate Blockchain into the student's education ?
• How to incentivize students about Blockchain ?
• Why are students having a hard time getting involved in Blockchain ?

We want to do this project for the open innovation festival that will be held in Geneva from the 14th to the 24th of March 2024. 

https://opengeneva.org/festivalog/

This festival is an open festival, everyone can come and participate and we can have a lot of visibility thanks to it. 

For this festival, a few partner companies will give some spaces out for the different stands/activities to be held in it. We then want to book one of them, which will give us much more time to organize it well and present it well to the participants.

At the end of the Hackathon, the participants will have a chance to participate in the next fund that will be held at this time and we will help them to submit their proposal on the Catalyst platform.

This Hackathon could be an amazing opportunity for the participants to start implementing in the Blockchain world, they will be able to submit some proposals afterwards and they will have some knowledge about Blockchain. In addition to this, they will find some researched ideas to start integrating the students in the Blockchain world as well as supporting the students' startups. Which is in our opinion a really important aspect for the evolution of Blockchain in our modern world.

We already contacted the organization that takes care of this event and had a call with them. They are really interested in us having this Hackathon about the Blockchain world for students.

[IMPACT] How does your proposed solution address the challenge and what benefits will this bring to the Cardano ecosystem?

Our proposed solution is fitting the challenge as its core is about bringing more education around blockchain to students. By doing it through Catalyst, we’ll be able to present what Catalyst is, as well as motivating people to be more educated around blockchain. 

The main subject of our Hackathon would be to connect the academic world to the Blockchain world. This will be a good solution to find innovative and interesting ways to connect students to Blockchain, coming from students and other people. 

Finally, the winner of the Hackathon will be able to have support from us to make a proposal to the next fund after this event about the solution they found during this Hackathon. 

Our proposal fits the challenge because it’s about helping students to be more aware of the Blockchain world. It will bring to the Cardano ecosystem a good visibility to people and will allow new proposers to come for the next Funds.

[IMPACT] How do you intend to measure the success of your project?

We will measure the success of our project with the number of participants to our hackathon. We also want to measure how large are the horizons of the participants, in the sense that we want academic people, students as well as traditional workers to propose a mix of ideas to help the academic world to connect well with Blockchain. 

Finally, a good proof of success would be the fact that some ideas are proposed from the participants during next Funds, and see these proposals being funded. 

[IMPACT] Please describe your plans to share the outputs and results of your project?

To share the outputs of our project, we will share a presentation that will document what happened in this Hackathon, what are the ideas of the participants for the challenge we want to pose, how many people have been involved…

We will also explain in what way the solution is feasible and in what it could be interesting to propose the solution of our participants to a Catalyst challenge for a next fund. 

Finally, we’ll help the participants to make the proposal to the adapted fund. The existence of this proposal will be a great proof of the result of our project.

[CAPABILITY/ FEASIBILITY] What is your capability to deliver your project with high levels of trust and accountability?

Our project is using the leverage of such a big event that is organized in Geneva. The “Festival d’Innovation Ouverte” is organized by a big entity called Open Geneva, which is truly engaged in educating people about innovation, and has a lot of engagement for students as well. 

Moreover, one of the proposers, Liâm Bodin, already worked with the persons that are in the head of organization for this event, so there is already a trust relationship between the proposer and the organizer. 

For accountability, our measures are not difficult to account for, as it’s only counting people that come and prove their engagement.

To finish, we know that access to resources and organization will be easier thanks to the leverage that Open Geneva is bringing us. 

[CAPABILITY/ FEASIBILITY] What are the main goals for the project and how will you validate if your approach is feasible?

The objectives of this proposal are multiples : 

• Allow persons to actively participate to the blockchain world during 24h of challenge → At least 3 teams of 5 persons
• Bringing interesting solutions to link the academic and blockchain worlds together, and propose it to next Funds → At least one solution that is proposed
• Bringing visibility to Catalyst initiative through the leverage of visibility that the Festival is → feedback of participants about their experience and knowledge of Cardano through a form 

The final goal is to try to integrate Blockchain into the education of the students.

[CAPABILITY/ FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed breakdown of your project’s milestones and each of the main tasks or activities to reach the milestone plus the expected timeline for the delivery.

Month 1-2 : 

• Start organizing the Hackathon with the people running the event
• Keep communication and a good relation with them
• Start seeing in which exact location we would do it

Month 3-4 : 

• Start contacting some people that could come and say a few words (someone from the Cardano Foundation that is located in Geneva for example.
• Start organizing what we will have during the Hackathon and discuss possible partnerships (i.e. Pizza, bring some people that have different experiences) 
• Start creating the presentation and the content that we will provide.

Month 5-6 : 

• Finish the organization, the plans, the partnerships and the content for the event 
• Huge marketing and advertising for the event in March 
• Run the event : 
• Present Catalyst and Cardano
• Present the challenge for the Hackathon
• Have someone from the Cardano Foundation or the Catalyst School to have a few words for the participants.
• Spend the 24 hours with the participants, bring pizzas, give them some advice and feedback, answer the questions

• Make each group present their project, announce the winner and offer each member 200ADA as a reward (they will need to open a wallet)

Month 7-8 : 

• Having feedbacks from the different stakeholders 
• Create a group for the different groups so we can help them to get onboarded on Catalyst and submit their project.
• Give advice and lead them to making good projects.

[CAPABILITY/ FEASIBILITY] Please describe the deliverables, outputs and intended outcomes of each milestone.

The presentation that we will have for the participants will be shared on the monthly report as well as on the final report.

We will take several pictures and videos of the event that we will post on a dedicated Instagram account that will be public and shared on the reports.

We will also share all the different project and the different presentations that have been made by the participants, so you can have an idea of what people think of.

We will also get some feedback from the guests (if we have a teacher for example), we need his feedback to see if this is doable. This feedback will be shared on the reports as well.

[RESOURCES & VALUE FOR MONEY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown of the proposed work and resources.

• Organization (Logistic) : 30h x 115ADA = 3450 ADA

• Marketing and advertising : 30h x 115 ADA = 3450 ADA

• Bring some food and Goodies (Cardano shirts, notebooks) : 6000 ADA (Pizza and snack for 30 people, and the goodies)

• Preparation of the event (activities, presentations) : 30h x 115 ADA = 3450 ADA

• Launching the event and staying in the place for 24h, keep the teams involved and motivated, organize the pitches by for each team, be sure that the event is doing well, organize the speaking time with the guests : 3772 ADA

• Keep in touch with all the participants and help them to get onboarded in the Catalyst project, to write their proposal, to get integrated in the community and to incentivize them to write more proposals : 4h x 8 weeks x 115 ADA = 2760 ADA

• Book a location for 24h : 11400 ADA

Total : 34282

[RESOURCES & VALUE FOR MONEY] How does the cost of the project represent value for money for the Cardano ecosystem?

For this project, there will be a lot of time dedicated from us, on behalf of our studies, in order to educate people about Catalyst and grow this amazing community that we have. All the time dedicated will in our opinion bring a lot of awareness and will probably lead to really great proposals that might have chances to get funded for fund 11 (or 12 depending on how much time it takes).

This project brings new people in the community as well as opportunities for them to create their own projects, which is also exactly what this challenge is aiming for.

[IMPORTANT NOTE] The Applicant agreed to Fund10 rules and also that data in the Submission Form and other data provided by the project team during the course of the project will be publicly available.

I Accept