Gimbalabs - Regional Cardano Student Society Playbook

[GENERAL] Name and surname of main applicant

Gimbalabs

[GENERAL] Are you delivering this project as an individual or as an entity (whether formally incorporated or not)

Entity (Incorporated)

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

4

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

No

[GENERAL] Summarize your solution to the problem (200-character limit including spaces)

To gather community intelligence to research and prepare an open-source playbook, enabling regional Cardano practitioners to kick-start local student society with support and ease.

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

No

[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.”

No dependencies

[GENERAL] Will your project’s output/s be fully open source?

Yes

[GENERAL] Please provide here more information on the open source status of your project outputs

All announcement, playbook links will be provided and shared publicly

[METADATA] Horizons

Education

[SOLUTION] Please describe your proposed solution

We will create a collaborative open-source playbook that will enable local Cardano community builders to establish a student society playbook. Here's what we are going to do:

Gather Community Intelligence

We will connect with regional community builders to gather insights for strategizing and identifying the scope and material for the playbook. Local community builders know the best of their countries. Each country may have its unique methods to onboard students.

Curate & Prepare Cardano Student Society Playbook

We will create guidelines for establishing Cardano student societies from the insights we gathered, including guidance on society structure, budgeting, and partnerships. This ensures we can setup a scalable solution for global adoption purpose.

Trial run the playbook

To ensure the playbook is a feasible solution, we will conduct a trial run of the playbook with a local community builder. The trial run aims to onboard pioneering students to implement and refine the playbook.

We need to consider the cost and benefits precisely when we propose any solutions. Our solution does not only involve student and community builders participation, it further scales the growth of Cardano in regional size with a controllable, easy-to-track, and follow approach. Let’s grow student adoption together.

[IMPACT] Please define the positive impact your project will have on the wider Cardano community

Regional Cardano Growth

By establishing student-led Cardano societies in regional universities, the project will foster localized blockchain communities, driving grassroots adoption and enabling region-specific initiatives.

Empowering Student Leadership

The project will cultivate the next generation of blockchain leaders, providing students with hands-on experience in organizing, educating, and promoting Cardano within their local communities, amplifying long-term engagement.

Sustainable Ecosystem Expansion

With a regional playbook guiding consistent efforts, the initiative ensures sustainable growth by creating decentralized, community-led hubs that continuously contribute to Cardano’s development and visibility.

[CAPABILITY & FEASIBILITY] What is your capability to deliver your project with high levels of trust and accountability? How do you intend to validate if your approach is feasible?

At Gimbalabs, we have built one of the best technical learning technologies in the Cardano ecosystem, with the ability to extract the fundamentals of complex topics (protocols, tooling, infrastructure, design patterns, etc) and package them into skills. That is our know-how.

Trust and accountability

• Talented developers, today founders of renowned Cardano startups (JPG store, MeshJS, Gods of Blocks, Loxe inc, Ekival, others), trusted us to take their first steps in the ecosystem: to know everything they needed to know, without restrictions, and from there, build their own path. We did not let them down.
• Gimbalabs is an infrastructure builder: Dandelion, Andamio.
• Gimbalabs is consulting: Joey's Hot Sauce, challenge "Spend ADA in your local community!", OneUpOneDown, Oxford University, Handshake, Blink Labs, MeshJS, SingularityNET, and others.

Approach validation

• Gimbalabs started with this successful Fund2 Proposal: https://gimbalabs.com/fund2.pdf (and scored the leading vote tally in Fund1 - before there was real funding)
• Has delivered 4 iterations of Plutus PBL Course, with 5th iteration, Plutus PBL 2024, launching now, in May 2024
• Host of weekly Playground sessions for 3+ years
• Host of twice-weekly (and now more!) Live Coding sessions for 2+ years
• Gimbalabs YouTube is a helpful archive: https://www.youtube.com/c/gimbalabs

Feasibility of implementation

• Talents: Gimbalabs consists of a group of educators and diverse professionals. The budget would be easily justified by the collective professional hours contributed to deliver one of the best courses on the Cardano ecosystem we strive to be.
• Approach: With the 4+ iterations of Plutus PBL Course, Gimbalabs is proven the expert of delivering such education materials.
• Platform: Gimbalabs founds Andamio, which is a highly effective education platform built on Cardano, natively as the best platform of delivering Cardano education materials.
• Know-how: Gimbalabs gathers a group of expert software engineer with extremely deep knowledge in the course content to be produced.

References

• Messari's "State of Cardano" report (discussed each quarter by C. Hoskinson) highlighted the role of Gimbalabs every quarter of 2023 as community-run project for education and developer tools, in the section "Community".
• Gimbalabs is part of the CBIA alliance (Cardano Blockchain Infrastructure Alliance) along with recognized names in the ecosystem: Maestro, TxPipe, Koios, Blink Labs, among others.
• Gimbalabs is part of the Certification working group coordinated by Intersect. An example of Gimbalabs' contribution is the document "CTI-2023-ADA-11-04: Multiple Satisfaction" authored by Professor M. Ali Modiri, Gimbalabs instructor and recognized ecosystem developer.

[PROJECT MILESTONES] What are the key milestones you need to achieve in order to complete your project successfully?

Milestone 1: Preparation and Organization Setup (1 Month)

Objective

• Establish a solid foundation for the project by setting up the necessary infrastructure, assembling the team, and defining project management practices.

Activities

• Set up legal and administrative frameworks.
• Confirm core team members and advisors.
• Establish project management setup to track the progress

Acceptance Criteria

• Legal entity established and operational.
• Public announcement on core team members and advisors.
• Project management document setup. A link of the document will be provided

Milestone 2: Collect Community Intelligence (1 month)

Objective

• Identify, connect and collect community intelligence about hosting local events. Gather thoughts on student society

Activities

• Connect with different regions' community builder and brainstorm
• Prepare the materials on brainstorming result
• Organize the information to set as the backbone for the playbook

Acceptance Criteria & Evidence

• Announcement in Gimbalabs discord about community event collaboration
• All information and materials organized in a public link

Milestone 3: Curate & Prepare Cardano Student Society Playbook (1 month)

Objective

• Prepare the well-curated Cardano student society playbook to the standard that any local community builders can directly use it 

Activities

• A full version of the playbook with necessary components including:
• Guidance on society cycle (length of terms)
• Guidance on society executive member formation (e.g. number of members and position)
• Guidance on year plan & budgeting
• Guidance on society branding guidelines
• Guidance on benefits to be provided to students participating in the society as executive members
• Guidance on partnership between student society and the local community builder entity

Acceptance Criteria & Evidence

• The public link of the playbook including all the necessary components.

Final Milestone: Trial Run of Student Society Playbook (1 month)

Objective

• Connect with any one of the community builders to trial run the playbook

Activities

• Trial run the student society with one of the local community builders with recruiting at least 3 pioneering students to conduct early preparative works
• Final close-out report and video

Acceptance Criteria & Evidence

• Public link on announcement on the student pioneers participated
• Public link on the preparatory report produced by the students
• Final close-out report and video summary.

[RESOURCES] Who is in the project team and what are their roles?

Gimbalabs - Open Source Project Community

• Gimbalabs creates scaffolding for a robust and resilient global network of leaders, devOps pioneers, builders, and educators because we know that in the hands of many, Cardano will help to solve real problems.
• Gimbalabs builds education materials for Cardano development and infrastructure toolings, hosting regular sessions for technical sharing, ideas curation and product demos.
• Gimbalabs would provide free license on the existing education content, knowledge and commitment to deliver a student oriented PBL course, alongside with the Andamio platform to help with the project delivery.

Hinson Wong - Educator

• Team member of Gimbalabs, driving Hong Kong community
• Key contributor to MeshJS, a Cardano SDK for DApp development
• Lead developer at Cardano Name Service (CNS)
• Extensive network with Hong Kong based hedge funds and individual HFTs
• Ex-Citi, Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA)
• Twitter: https://x.com/SIDANWhatever
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hinsonwong/
• Github: https://github.com/sidanwhatever

[BUDGET & COSTS] Please provide a cost breakdown of the proposed work and resources

Milestone 1: Preparation and Organization Setup

Activities:

• ADA 10,000 - Set up legal and administrative frameworks.
• ADA 5,000 - Confirm core team members and advisors.
• ADA 10,000 - Establish project management setup to track the progress

Total Budget: ADA 25,000

Milestone 2: Collect Community Intelligence

Activities:

• ADA 5,000 - Connect with different regions' community builder and brainstorm
• ADA 10,000 - Prepare the materials on brainstorming result
• ADA 10,000 - Organize the information to set as the backbone for the playbook

Total Budget: ADA 25,000

Milestone 3: Curate & Prepare Cardano Student Society Playbook

Objective: Prepare the well-curated Cardano student society playbook to the standard that any local community builders can directly use it 

Activities:

• ADA 25,000 - A full version of the playbook with necessary components including:
• Guidance on society cycle (length of terms)
• Guidance on society executive member formation (e.g. number of members and position)
• Guidance on year plan & budgeting
• Guidance on society branding guidelines
• Guidance on benefits to be provided to students participating in the society as executive members
• Guidance on partnership between student society and the local community builder entity

Total Budget: ADA 25,000

Milestone 4: Trial Run of Student Society Playbook

Objective: Connect with any one of the community builders to trial run the playbook

Activities:

• ADA - 25,000 Trial run the student society with one of the local community builders with recruiting at least 3 pioneering students to conduct early preparative works
• Final close-out report and video

Total budget: ADA 25,000 

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

This project represents excellent value for the Cardano ecosystem by leveraging student-led initiatives to promote Cardano at minimal cost. By empowering students to drive Cardano adoption, we can tap into regional student society to spread awareness within universities and beyond. As students engage with Cardano, this initiative will catalyze mass adoption in academic institutions. The experience of Gimbalabs' educational expertise ensures that we know how to effectively manage student groups, reducing operational friction and ensuring that resources are well-utilized, avoiding any mismanagement of funds.