Onboarding Hispanic Developers - Aiken

[GENERAL] Name and surname of main applicant

Cristian Jair Rojas Velez

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

Individual

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

12

[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)

A series of tutorials, articles and Youtube videos in spanish about Aiken, with the community feedback I will create both a synchronous and self-paced course for writing smart contracts using Aiken.

[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 the articles, tutorials and the course will be free and public.

[SOLUTION] Please describe your proposed solution.

Context.

Aiken is a new programming language and toolkit for developing smart contracts on the Cardano blockchain.

Aiken takes inspiration from many modern languages such as Gleam, Rust, and Elm, which are known for friendly error messages and an overall excellent developer experience.

With this in mind, it seems to me that Aiken is an excellent option for onboarding new developers into our ecosystem.

How I perceive the problem?

It is logical that Aiken, being a new programming language, does not have so many resources to learn how to use it properly. In the last few months there has been a lot of content oriented to learn Aiken but what I have noticed is that there is no or very little content for hispanic developers.

Detailed solution.

The proposed solution is to create technical articles, tutorials and Youtube videos about blockchain fundamentals, smart contracts and Aiken language.

With the feedback from the community I will create both a synchronous and a self-paced (using an instance of Andamio) course to write smart contracts in Aiken.

To be honest I am not an expert in Aiken or writing smart contracts, I genuinely believe that you don't have to be a software engineer to know how to write code, write scripts, read code, review it and be able to edit it.

But I also think it is necessary to try these things, and get my head around them, read the documentation that has been written on this topic, that will put me in a better place to write.

Although it is true that I mentioned before about the lack of resources to learn aiken because it is a new language, I must also say that there is some material to work on it although it is all in english.

Technical Content.

In order to create these articles and tutorials I will rely on the resources created in English, it does not mean that it is a copy-paste, but rather I have to do a deep research and understand the topic in order to create a tutorial in Spanish for specific aspects of Aiken, here are some examples of resources that I will use:

• Aiken official site

• Awesome Aiken ( A collection of (curated) awesome Aiken libraries, DApps, tutorials and other cool stuff).

• Aiken for amateurs

• Developer portal - Aiken

• Gimbalabs PPBL

• Stoic pool youtube series 

As you can see, there is not a single resource for Spanish-speaking developers.

*The Youtube videos will be based in scripts of this tecnical content.

Synchronous and a self-paced course.

The premise is that by publishing these articles, tutorials and YouTube videos, I will accomplish two things:

1) I am going to acquire a great understanding and skills related to writing smart contracts using Aiken.

2) An audience of Hispanic developers capable of committing to start and finish a course based on Aiken.

Using the Andamio platform and based on the feedback received from the community about the technical content published previously, I will create the content for this course (lectures, live coding sessions, assesments, etc). 

At this point I have to say that a good friend (andamio cofounder) with experience in smart contract development in Cardano is going to support me to create this course and deliver these synchronous classes.

This live course will be recorded, the classes will be uploaded to the Andamio instance and we will have the self-paced course.

Who will this proposal engage and how I will demonstrate the impact?

It is logical that the initiative is aimed at Hispanic developers, but I believe that anyone interested in learning about Aiken will benefit in one way or another.

It seems to me that having all this technical content available in Spanish and also the possibility of attending this course will certainly have a positive impact on the Cardano ecosystem, taking into account that today this content does not exist.

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

The purpose of the proposal is to onboard Hispanic developers and community members interested in learning more about blockchain technology and Aiken specifically.

The technical articles will be published in:

• Website (domain to be defined)
• Official Cardano Forum in Spanish
• In the Awesome Aiken github 
• Cardano Spot

Youtube videos will be published in a channel to be defined.

• To measure the impact of the articles we will measure the number of views, comments, replies.

• To measure the impact of the videos on Youtube we will measure the number of views, comments, likes and subscriptions to the channel.

At the end of the technical content development stage, I will create a report condensing all these metrics, talking about insights and lessons learned.

The course will be held at the Andamio instance, the registration will be on the same website where the articles will be published.

• To measure the impact, one metric will be the number of people registered to the course, which will be a maximum of 30 students, we will also measure the impact according to the progress of the students and skills learned through tests, assignments, exams and a technical challenge at the end of completing the course.

The impact to the ecosystem will be reflected in all these new developers and people in the community already having a more advanced knowledge of Aiken, people who will be more capable of building on the cardano network.

[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?

I'm going to talk a little bit about who I am, I'm originally from Mexico, I'm in Cardano for a little more than two years, I got funding in project catalyst fund7 with the proposal called "Support small farmers in Latam".

I was able to successfully delivered and completet the proposal, also in project catalysat I have participated as a reviewer in fund 8, 9 and in the last fund as a level 1 reviewer with a total of 80 proposals reviewed last fund.

As a member of the Latam Cardano Community, I have participated in educational content with Universities in Mexico.

• I´m leading in Mexico the proposal funded in fund10 "Universities Onboarding to Cardano" from Latam Community.
• I participated in the Cardano summit in mexico 2022.

• Representing Cardano Latam Community in "Cardano Days" , Guadalajara , Mexico.

This shows my involvement in the ecosystem in the previous two years, thanks to my participation doing onboarding in Universities and meetups in Mexico, I consider myself with the ability to do onboarding hispanic developers that many of them are students of these Universities.

I participated in organizing two CIP-1694 workshops in Mexico, in the Pan-latam workshop in Uruguay and participating in the final workshop in Edinburgh. 

• Co-authored the Latina American regional conclusions document
• (https://github.com/latamcardano/CIP1694Workshops.)

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

Technical content - first stage.

March 2024- June 2024

The first milestone of the project will be the publication of technical content, that is an article or tutorial every week and its respective video on Youtube.

Outputs.

• A total of 24 articles or tutorials to learn Aiken. (2 per week)

• A total of 24 videos on Youtube with scripts based on these articles or tutorials. (2 per week)

Acceptance criteria.

A report document with all the links to the published technical content and containing the links to the uploaded videos.

Technical content - second stage.

June 2024- September 2024

The second milestone of the project will be the publication of technical content, that is an article or tutorial every week and its respective video on Youtube. This content differs from the first stage, since in order to create this content, all the feedback provided by the community in relation to the previously published content will be taken.

Outputs.

• A total of 24 articles or tutorials to learn Aiken based on community feedback. (2 per week)

• A total of 24 videos on Youtube with scripts based on these articles or tutorials based on community feedback. (2 per week)

Acceptance criteria.

A report document with all the links to the published technical content and containing the links to the uploaded videos.

Creation of the course content and creation of the course itself.

September 2024- January 2024

Based on the technical content and feedback from the community, this milestone aims to create the educational content of the course and create an own instance of Andamio to set up the course.

Outputs.

• Course summary, number of hours, learning objectives, instructors , dates and schedules.
• Course material, readings, exercises, homework, auxiliary material.
• Course created under the Andamio instance.

Acceptance criteria.

• A complete course brochure in pdf.

• The course created on the Andami instance with access for community auditors.

The delivery of the course.

January 2024-March 2024

This milestone is extremely important, it refers to once the course is created, it will be delivered synchronously for a maximum of 30 people. Based on the dates and times of the last milestone, we will proceed to deliver this course.

Outputs.

• Successful course delivery

Acceptance criteria.

• Video summary of the course delivery, insghtsm testimonials.
• A written report about the course delivery.

Project completed.

After delivering the course, the lessons will be recorded and uploaded to the course itself, to have this course available at your own pace.

The information from the course and published technical materials, articles, tutorials or videos, must be integrated in order to obtain data and have conclusions about the impact of the project.

Outputs.

• self-paced course accessible to everyone.
• Conclusions about the impact and success of the proposal.

Acceptance criteria.

• Written report with all the data, challenges, feedback, lessons learned from the project.

• Final video report.

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

Cristian Rojas- (@Crisro0787) In charge of creating digital content: articles, tutorials, videos & in charge of creating the instance in Andamio.

Cristian Rojas & Andamio Co-founder In charge of the course delivery.

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

Detailed budget.

Creation of technical content.

The creation of each article or tutorial ( min 2000 words)= 250 USD

Creation of video tutorial on youtube = 150 USD

That's a total of 48 articles/tutorials and 48 videos during the two stages of technical content creation, that's :

400 usd x 48 = 19,200 USD

Creation of course content.

I estimate that the course will have about 40 hours of content, including lectures and exercises. Since it is not a recorded course, there is no need for video editing or any other type of editing, rather than creating the content itself, so I estimate that the course will have about 200 hours of work:

• Setting up learning objectives & creating course outline : 30 hours x $38/hr = 1,140 USD
• Working design lectures content: 60 hours x $40/hr = 2,400 USD
• Designing visual content (graphs, infographics etc.) : 55 hours x $36/hr = 1,980 USD
• Designing activities & assessments : 35 hours x $38/hr = 1,330 USD
• Reviewing content : 20 hours x $38/hr = 760 USD

Total = 7,610 USD

Creation of Andamio instance.

The Andamio packages are priced at an early release rate beteween 7,000 USD and 18,000 USD. There is also the open source option, where there is the need to take the time and have some technical knowledge to do it, in this case I will opt for that option and put a budget of 3500 USD for the time required. 

Course delivery.

To deliver the course will require two instructors for this type of synchronous classes, the rewards per hour for each instructor I proposed at $24 per hour.

40 total hours of the course X $22 = 880 USD per instructor = $1,760 USD.

I also propose a small budget to promote the course for a few days, the budget in this case will be 800 usd for marketing.

Total requested in USD : 32,870

To calculate the ADA price to be taken for the budget and its monthly volatility, I used the following formulas:

ADA price = the average price over the last 365 days = 0.32 USD

Monthly volatility = The standard deviation of that same sample (0.3137) multiplied by the square root of 30 (5.477) = 0.17 = 17%.

Then the required ADA will be =( 32,870 USD/0.32 USD ) * 1.17 = 120,180 ADA

Reasoning behind this calculation.

Taking the monthly volatility makes sense to me since the payments are usually monthly, if only one single payment was made, surely the annualized volatility would make more sense, taking into account then the monthly volatility of the last year, that is why I decided to take the average of the whole year for the base price of ADA.

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

For the creation of technical content, the average hourly wage is 40 usd per hour, I estimate that writing such an article can take me 10 to 12 hours due to my beginner level. Due to the technical nature I see it complicated to do it in less than 8 hours, if I do it in 8 hours, I would be earning an hourly wage of 31.25, below the average.

Creating and editing youtube videos seems justified and reasonable to me.

For the creation of the course it seems to me that the budget is equally reasonable given the amount of content to be created.

For the proposal to create the instance in Andamio, if I ask the Andamio team to create the course, they would be charging me 7000 usd which is fair and reasonable due to the time dedicated to do it and the necessary knowledge, in this proposal I propose to do it with 3500 usd.

For the delivery of the course, I think it is important to have two instructors to be able to manage a group of up to 30 people, moderate the chat, answer questions and be able to guide the learning of the students in a better way, the average salary for a bootcamp instructor is $ 22 per hour.

[IMPORTANT NOTE] The Applicant agrees to Fund 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