BR/US University Hubs!

Today, many university students are interested in blockchain but they don't know where to start and get involved with the ecosystem.

At the same time, city leaders seek ways to retain college graduates and attract talented professionals by launching new industries and fostering innovation.

With this pilot proposal, our aim is to launch Cardano Community Hubs by starting with local colleges and universities. We will engage with college students by hosting hackathons and co-creation sessions. We seek to build upon this engagement by launching broader community hubs, seeded by local students.

We aim at operating on two levels:

1. Meta problem of retaining talented college grads
2. Problem sensing at local level and onboarding college students and recent graduates to identify local problems and to design solutions (Victor and James will apply their experience in applied solutions when facilitating local events)

College towns often serve as innovation hubs. Let's build on this tradition by fostering/leveraging university relationships to create models for local hubs and widespread adoption.

In order to drive adoption and awareness of Cardano, we must emphasize how it can be used to address existing problems. In our cities, leaders seek new ways to encourage recent college graduates to stick around, build lives, and contribute to local economies. The birth of a new industry provides an opportunity for new expert hubs to emerge.

Can we create buzz in local governments by showing that we can engage with college students and even make an impact by keeping graduates around?

List of possible partner universities

• https://www.wpi.edu/
• https://www.holycross.edu/
• https://www.clarku.edu/
• https://www.worcester.edu/
• https://ufrj.br/en/
• https://www.uff.br/
• http://www.ime.eb.mil.br/
• https://www.puc-rio.br/index.html
• https://www.uerj.br/

Roadmap

• November/21: Funded through Catalyst.
• December/21-January/22: Marketing and reaching out to university students.
• February-May/22: Creation of community university hubs, training students in Cardano and Catalyst, and incentivizing knowledge exchange between US and BR hubs.
• May/22: Hackathon, focusing on solving local problems.
• August-October/22: Hackathon winners working as interns in Cardano projects (Gimbalabs and other partner projects)

KPIs

• Number of students registered in the community hubs
• Number of active students attending training
• Number of registered groups in the Hackathon
• Number of successful applications developed during the Hackathon

The proposers

• James Dunseith co-founder of Gimbalabs, Plutus Pioneer (1st Cohort), career educator who has been participating in Project Catalyst since Fund 1.
• Victor Corcino is active Catalyst Member, Community Advisor and Proposal Mentor, member of the 1st Catalyst Circle, leader of the Catalyst School, core member of the Catalyst Swarm, and has a strong professional and academic background in Engineering, Mathematics, Data Science and Machine Learning.

Budget breakdown

• Marketing and reaching out to students: $500
• Local training sessions with students: 60h x $50/h = $3000
• Project and community management: $1500
• Hackathon prizes and participation incentives: $3000

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