Sustain and Maintain Gimbalabs

[GENERAL] Name and surname of main applicant

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

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

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

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

Gimbalabs wants to ensure that the Cardano developer community has continued access to open spaces where they can learn, collaborate, and build together.

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

[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?

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

All community events and activities would be open for public. All materials would be on (an) open source Github repo(s) with Apache-2.0 license.

[METADATA] SDG rating

SDG 4: Quality Education

The proposal aligns with SDG 4 as it aims to provide quality education content and structured spaces for learning within the Cardano developer community. By offering various project-based learning courses and maintaining open spaces for collaboration, the project contributes to enhancing access to education and fostering skill development in the field of blockchain technology.

SDG 9: Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure

SDG 9 is relevant to the proposal as it focuses on promoting inclusive and sustainable industrialization and fostering innovation. By providing a virtual co-habitat for Cardano developers to learn, collaborate, and build together, the project contributes to the development of sustainable infrastructure within the blockchain ecosystem, thereby fostering innovation and technological advancement.

SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities

The proposal correlates with SDG 11 as it emphasizes the importance of creating sustainable communities and spaces for learning and collaboration. By establishing open and replicable safe spaces for individuals and organizations to engage in Cardano development activities, the project promotes the concept of sustainable urbanization and community resilience within the digital landscape.

[SOLUTION] Please describe your proposed solution

Gimbalabs was founded in 2021 as a space to learn Cardano development and get involved in live projects. In the course of three years, this space evolved into a virtual co-habitat that aims to, “provide open, replicable safe spaces to learn, to explore, and to empower individuals and organizations anywhere so that we can solve meaningful problems.”

Gimbalabs in general is solving the problem of maintaining, sustaining, and replicating spaces to learn, collaborate, and build on Cardano.

Various sub-spaces, projects, organizations, and project-based learning (pbl) courses have sprung from Gimbalabs. Below is a comprehensive list of all the off-spring endeavors.

Sub-spaces:

• Plutus PBL Live Coding
• Mesh PBL Live Coding
• Cardano Go PBL Live Coding
• Gimbalabs Playground (an open space to share ideas, present projects, get feedback, etc. with the Cardano community)
• Gimbalabs Open Spaces (a co-creation and governance space for Gimbalabs open for anyone to join)
• Gimbalabs Hong Kong (local community networking and learning space powered by SIDAN Lab)

Project Based Learning Courses:

• Plutus PBL (PPBL 2024 is live! https://plutuspbl.io/blog)
• Mesh PBL
• Cardano Go PBL
• More courses like Aiken PBL, Marlow PBL, etc. are also in the process of being created

Projects / Infrastructure:

• Dandelion (pre-built images for quick deployment of core Cardano infrastructure)
• Gimbalabs Stakepool (Ticker: GMBL)
• Andamio (a decentralized Leraninga nd Contribution management system built on Cardano)

Gimbalabs is currently using Sociocracy 3.0 (https://sociocracy30.org/) as a framework for everyday collaborations and consent.

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

Gimbalab’s impact track record through the years:

• 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:
• Some new PBL courses (coming soon): Mesh PBL, Aiken PBL, etc.

How will we measure the impact?

Here are some straightforward metrics to track Gimbalab’s success:

• Number of PBLs maintained and upgraded
• Number of new PBLs added
• Number of sub-spaces maintained
• Number of new sub-spaces created
• Number of services/infrastructure maintained and added
• Number of students that started a course
• Number of students that completed a course

All outputs, including the student stats and the links to courses, GitHub repos, governance open space, live coding sessions, etc. will be shared publicly and in the milestones.

[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, Cardano Name Service (CNS), 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, CNS, 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:

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 discipline of operation.

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

Milestone 1: Proposal onboarding and planning (1 Month)

Objective: Establish a solid foundation for the project by setting up the necessary responsibilities, infrastructure, and defining project management practices.

Activities:

• Set up responsibilities for current community activities such as open spaces.
• Create a list of all infrastructure needed for coordination, communication, and governance
• Establish project management tools and practices
• Organizing the current Notion space for all activities and all ongoing cost items (e.g. subscriptions)

Acceptance Criteria & Evidence:

• Document stating responsibilities
• A document listing all the tools currently used, and a list of project management practices we adopt.
• A publicly accessible link to Notion page stating current activities organization of Gimbalabs

Milestone 2: Month 1 - Gimbalabs Maintenance (1 Month)

Objective: Maintain Gimbalabs operation for a month covering activities as below.

Activities:

• All the below spaces are hosted as per schedule
• Mesh PBL Live Coding
• Cardano Go PBL Live Coding
• Gimbalabs Playground (an open space to share ideas, present projects, get feedback, etc. with the Cardano community)
• Gimbalabs Open Spaces (a co-creation and governance space for Gimbalabs open for anyone to join)
• Updating Plutus PBL
• Keeping up the community engagement with social media

Acceptance Criteria & Evidence:

• Publicly accessible link(s) to updated Plutus PBL course
• Publicly accessible link(s) to all the live coding videos
• Publicly accessible link(s) to all posts on various social media

Milestone 3: Month 2 - Gimbalabs Maintenance (1 Month)

Objective: Maintain Gimbalabs operation for a month covering activities as below.

Activities:

• All the below spaces are hosted as per schedule
• Mesh PBL Live Coding
• Cardano Go PBL Live Coding
• Gimbalabs Playground (an open space to share ideas, present projects, get feedback, etc. with the Cardano community)
• Gimbalabs Open Spaces (a co-creation and governance space for Gimbalabs open for anyone to join)
• Updating Plutus PBL
• Keeping up the community engagement with social media

Acceptance Criteria & Evidence:

• Publicly accessible link(s) to updated Plutus PBL course
• Publicly accessible link(s) to all the live coding videos
• Publicly accessible link(s) to all posts on various social media

Milestone 4: Month 3 - Gimbalabs Maintenance (1 Month)

Objective: Maintain Gimbalabs operation for a month covering activities as below.

Activities:

• All the below spaces are hosted as per schedule
• Mesh PBL Live Coding
• Cardano Go PBL Live Coding
• Gimbalabs Playground (an open space to share ideas, present projects, get feedback, etc. with the Cardano community)
• Gimbalabs Open Spaces (a co-creation and governance space for Gimbalabs open for anyone to join)
• Updating Plutus PBL
• Keeping up the community engagement with social media

Acceptance Criteria & Evidence:

• Publicly accessible link(s) to updated Plutus PBL course
• Publicly accessible link(s) to all the live coding videos
• Publicly accessible link(s) to all posts on various social media

Milestone 5: Close-out Report (1 Month)

Objective: Preparing the close out report

Activities:

• Prepare the close-out report

Acceptance Criteria & Evidence:

• Close-out Video & Report including all participation stats, course updates, and progress made in 6 months

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

Some of the key contributors and founding members of Gimbalabs are:

James Dunseith - Space Hosts for Various Live Sessions

• Co-founder of Gimbalabs
• Co-founder of Andamio
• Advisor and teacher for Cardano developers
• Prior Experience
• Master Teacher & Coach at BetterLesson
• Teacher Educator at Mind Research Institute
• Master Teacher at Math for America
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-dunseith-0135651/
• Github: https://github.com/workshop-maybe
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/jamesdunseith

Hinson Wong - Sustainability Circle Moderator

• Co-founder at DeltaDeFi
• Co-founder at SIDAN Lab
• 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)
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hinsonwong/
• Github: https://github.com/sidanwhatever

Harsha Gullapalli - Proposal Managers

• Gimbalabs Contributing Member
• UX Researcher, Product Design Engineer
• 3+ years in the Cardano and Catalyst ecosystem
• Contributor to multiple web3 DAOs
• Linkedin
• Github

Sebastian Pabon - Social Media and Communications

• Project Manager, Educator and Facilitator at Gimbalabs
• Co-founder at Andamio
• Consultant at Emurgo Academy, European Business University of Luxembourg
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/seb-pabon/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/SebastianPabonB

Newman Lanier - Space Hosts for Various Live Sessions

• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/newman5/

M. Ali Modiri - Smart Contract Developer | Malware Analyst | Blockchain Security and Certification Researcher

• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/m-a-modiri/

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

Milestone 1: Proposal onboarding and planning (1 Month)

Activities Budget:

• ADA 2,500 - Set up responsibilities for current community activities such as open spaces.
• ADA 2,500 - Create a list of all infrastructure needed for coordination, communication, and governance
• ADA 2,500 - Establish project management tools and practices
• ADA 2,500 - Organizing the current Notion space for all activities
• ADA 30,000 - Treasury
• Total Budget - ADA 40,000

Milestone 2: Month 1 - Gimbalabs Maintenance (1 Month)

Activities Budget:

• All the below spaces are hosted as per schedule
• ADA 2,000 - Mesh PBL Live Coding
• ADA 2,000 - Cardano Go PBL Live Coding
• ADA 2,000 - Gimbalabs Playground (an open space to share ideas, present projects, get feedback, etc. with the Cardano community)
• ADA 2,000 - Gimbalabs Open Spaces (a co-creation and governance space for Gimbalabs open for anyone to join)
• ADA 7,500 - Updating Plutus PBL
• ADA 2,000 - Keeping up the community engagement with social media
• Total Budget - ADA 17,500

Milestone 3: Month 2 - Gimbalabs Maintenance (1 Month)

Activities Budget:

• All the below spaces are hosted as per schedule
• ADA 2,000 - Mesh PBL Live Coding
• ADA 2,000 - Cardano Go PBL Live Coding
• ADA 2,000 - Gimbalabs Playground (an open space to share ideas, present projects, get feedback, etc. with the Cardano community)
• ADA 2,000 - Gimbalabs Open Spaces (a co-creation and governance space for Gimbalabs open for anyone to join)
• ADA 7,500 - Updating Plutus PBL
• ADA 2,000 - Keeping up the community engagement with social media
• Total Budget - ADA 17,500

Milestone 4: Month 3 - Gimbalabs Maintenance (1 Month)

Activities Budget:

• All the below spaces are hosted as per schedule
• ADA 2,000 - Mesh PBL Live Coding
• ADA 2,000 - Cardano Go PBL Live Coding
• ADA 2,000 - Gimbalabs Playground (an open space to share ideas, present projects, get feedback, etc. with the Cardano community)
• ADA 2,000 - Gimbalabs Open Spaces (a co-creation and governance space for Gimbalabs open for anyone to join)
• ADA 7,500 - Updating Plutus PBL
• ADA 2,000 - Keeping up the community engagement with social media
• Total Budget - ADA 17,500

Milestone 5: Close-out Report (1 Month)

Activities Budget:

• ADA 7,500 - Prepare the close-out report

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

The cost of the project provides substantial value to the Cardano developer and learner communities by providing free education and collaboration opportunities with on-chain credentials.

Educating, connecting, and supporting the future builders of Cardano provides exponentially greater value as compared to the budget.