Cardano coffee - Regional languages

[IMPACT]

The overall aim is to create content in regional languages that covers the vast majority of the population in India and make that content easily accessible.

Motivation:

• India is young in its demography where the youth are familiar with new technologies and internet penetration has grown in the country over the past few years. However, awareness about Cardano appears to be weak. There needs to be efforts for ease of access to content and publicity. The resources to learn about Cardano are not in a format that suits native speakers.

• The 2021 Global Crypto Adoption Index by Chainanalysis places India in second place for crypto adoption. However, the trading and investment activity is skewed towards Bitcoin and certain meme coins. We believe that the retail investors are primarily driven by awareness about just Bitcoin and in other cases by hype than fundamentals. The general population is yet to discover Cardano and its merits as a 3rd generation blockchain. 

• India has a large pool of skilled professionals with the IT sector employing close to 5 million people. However there has not been much adoption of Cardano among the developer community with a lack of multilingual resources.

• Members of our team were fortunate to be mentored by experts from the global Cardano community and we would like to propage that among regional communities in India through our content in regional languages.

A quick perspective about languages in India:

At the time of Independence, India was formed as a union of states comprising different states and Union territories with distinct culture, language and lifestyle. To this day the diversity of languages has remained intact while culture & lifestyle has melded. That is primarily due to how different the languages are from each other. As a result language is an important attribute of the population that influences one's choice of profession, residence as well as education.

The distribution of speaker strength (as % of total population) for the top 10 languages (out of 22 specified in the constitution) is as follows.

Hindi : 43.63%

Bengali : 8.03%

Marathi : 6.86%

Telugu : 6.70%

Tamil : 5.70%

Gujarati : 4.58%

Urdu : 4.19%

Kannada : 3.61%

Odia : 3.10%

Malayalam : 2.88%

This data is sourced from the latest Census data (2011) published by the central government, which can be found here: https://censusindia.gov.in/2011Census/Language-2011/Statement-4.pdf

The census that was planned for 2021 has been delayed due to the Covid-19 pandemic. However it can be safely assumed the figures above have not significantly changed since 2011. Even though ~12% of the population is estimated to speak English, it's unlikely that the whole 12% have sufficient fluency to learn Cardano in English.

Our solution in detail

We will build an environment where people can learn about Cardano for its merit both academically and philosophically. This requires activities in three tracks:

Track 1 : Content creation

Track 2 : Accessibility and communication channel

Track 3 : Promotion and outreach

Regional languages covered and reasons for the choice:

We will cover 5 regional languages, namely Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam.

We provide reasons for this choice, which we feel is important to know if you are reading this and you are not from India.

1. Hindi is spoken in the north of India and covers more than 40% of the total population. Hindi is well understood in the northern states even if the native language of the state is not Hindi and say for example Bengali.

2. The languages of the south are very different from Hindi and at the same time different from each other both in terms of script and grammar. As a result, it's important to cover those southern languages.

3. Covering all the languages or even the top 10 listed above, will stretch our efforts to ensure depth and quality of content and will inflate the budget requirements.

As a result, we will cover the aforesaid 5 languages spoken by 62.52% of the total population. In addition, Hindi is understood in most of the northern part of the country including states where Bengali (8.03 %), Marathi (6.86 %), Gujarati (4.58%), Urdu (4.19%) and Odia (3.1%) are spoken. As a result, with Hindi and the southern languages, the effective coverage will be greater, which in the best case scenario being ~90% of the total population.

Details of activities under each track

Track 1. Content creation:

1.1 Translate articles and documentation into regional languages.

The target audience here includes those with technology/programming background as well those outside the technology domain.

What is in scope for translation?

The content has to be diverse enough in terms of topics and difficulty to provide apt choice for each section of the audience.

We will start with the famous `Why Cardano` essay. https://why.cardano.org/en/introduction/motivation/

This is ideal for the start as it illustrates the philosophy of Cardano. A good part of the Cardano community is engaged in the ecosystem since they believe that it can change the world for the better. Further, on the technology side this masterpiece has stayed relevant. For example the foundations of the latest developments in Cardano related to sidechains and scaling can be traced back to the settlement layer sections in the essay. Given we are into the Basho phase, governance is the next key aspect and it's essential for new community members to understand Cardano holistically to participate in governance. Overall, the essay indeed articulates what makes Cardano a genuine blockchain compared to many others out there and these reasons make it important to start with.

The following is a non-exhaustive list of categories that will be subsequently covered in content creation:

Set 1:

• The ‘Why Cardano’ essay.
• Fundamentals of blockchain - Basics of cryptography, Consensus protocols, Decentralisaton, Staking and delegating, wallets and addresses, transactions and immutability.
• A who's who for the Cardano ecosystem. You can imagine this to be a directory to identify the must know entities, components and people in the Cardano ecosystem. Entities will cover popular projects and teams working in Cardano today like IOG,Cardano Foundation,Catalyst, Atala Prism and others like DEXes, DEFI platforms, resources like github repo, developer portal etc. People will cover official reps of IOG, Cardano Foundation and Catalyst. This information will be presented like a directory pointing to official websites/resources rather than duplicating the source. A certain advantage to this approach we see here is to provide guidance on how to navigate Cardano as well as have sufficient information to not fall into scams for audience new to Cardano.

Set 2:

• Blogs and articles published by IOG. The content that will be covered first will be related to e-UTXO model, Proof of Stake etc. Here we will be cherry picking content published by IOG with weightage to its significance.
• Important announcements from IOG that our team will select based on our knowledge about Cardano and community feedback.
• Write up about Plutus and Prism Pioneer programmes and how to participate in those.
• Notable examples of real world projects being built in Cardano. This is essential to inform people that Cardano can create an impact in everyone's life. Notable examples of Cardano partnering with governments like in Ethiopia and elsewhere in Africa will be covered as it shows reliability of Cardano.

Set 3:

This set is focussed on the technically aligned audience.

• Description of technical components - node, cli, wallet, address derivation, graphql, chain-index, ouroboros protocol etc.
• Setting up node and using the cardano-cli
• Minting native tokens and NFT using cli
• Using the serialization library (cardano-serialization-lib)

Wherever relevant, the content created will be marked with level of technicality or intended audience. For example, when we talk about the e-UTXO model, a developer needs to be provided in depth technical details whereas someone exploring Cardano blockchain for augmenting their business process or looking to invest in ADA may need to understand just the advantages of e-UTXO model. And so for such topics we will create a simple as well as an in depth version. We will start with topics like e-UTXO model, Proof of Stake. This lays the path for learners to understand the academic merits of Cardano and what makes it a truly decentralized, 3rd generation blockchain.

What is out of scope for content creation?

The academic whitepapers from IOG. We would not translate the research whitepapers at this stage since we think that the benefits of translating them specifically are less. It can indeed be taken up in future if needed.

We call out that through our content we will not be explicitly asking people to buy ADA. The goal is to generate awareness about Cardano for its genuine merits as a 3rd generation blockchain and we have to avoid being mistaken as a marketing scheme. However, we believe that raising awareness in itself will act bullishly for Cardano given the number of crypto users in India today.

1.2 Create audio & visual content in regional languages.

We will make videos in regional languages for relevant subjects from the translated content, latest announcements from IOG and latest events in the Cardano ecosystem. These are intended to be short videos to be uploaded on platforms like Youtube in the 5 languages we cover. The focus will be to reuse the content we prepare and convert the medium of delivery to audio/video.

Track 2 : Accessibility and communication channel

It has to be ensured that the content created is easily accessible to the public and that there is a channel for the audience and our team to interact.

For accessibility, a website will be created that will host all the translated material that is created as well as list out the audio/visual material. Internet penetration in India has grown significantly over the past few years with the rollout of 4G. People own mobile phones even in remote areas, a web based repository will reach the most number of people. The website will be developed in parallel to the content creation so that the content can be made available for consumption soon after creation.

Discord channels will be set up for each regional language for the audience to interact with each other or with the content creation/guidance team. These channels will allow them to collect continuous feedback from the community so that content can be aligned with their needs and interests.

What is in scope for the website?

• A repository of all content created.
• Users can discover translated content based on topics.

What is out of scope for the website?

• Value added features like discussion forums. We intend to leverage the communication channels for discussions at present.
• Ability for the community to create and curate content. We consider this a good feature, but due to resource constraints it is not scoped in at this time.

Track 3: Outreach and promotion

Outreach activities:

For community members who would like to implement a project with Cardano or submit a proposal in upcoming Catalyst Funds, we will share our experience and guidance. Some of our team members have been developing in Cardano and also have got multiple funded proposals as well as delivered proposals from Fund 6 and Fund 7. We can guide the regional community on how to set up Cardano nodes for testnet and mainnet, use the cardano-cli for making transactions or minting native tokens, write Plutus smart contract and test with the PAB simulator, how to interact with browser based wallets from web app using the serialization library and so forth. We will be able to act as a sounding board for ideas as well as troubleshooting challenges for the native speakers. We will also be available to facilitate events such as meetups or hackathons.

Promotion activities:

We will engage in active promotion to a reasonable extent so as to spread the word about the regional content and website. While social media channels are the default medium of promotion, it is likely that our information can get lost in the clutter on social media or that not all sections/age-groups of the society are reached. So we intend to supplement social media publicity with traditional mediums like newspapers. We will publish news in the vernacular newspapers about the website and the communication channels.

Future scope

In future, we would like to package the content we created into a ‘structured course’. For this, we will collaborate with other entities within the Cardano space like Gimbalabs which conducts structured Project Based Learning courses.

Enhancements to the website depending on user feedback and additional of value added features like regional discussion forums. 

1. The challenge intends to grow the community of developers and educators. Our regional content will help native speakers to learn about Cardano. The website and communication channels will act as discussion forums and inform them about pioneer programmes and how to get involved. The outreach activities will take the information to those who are not aware of Cardano. The talent is definitely there. It can be assumed that there will also be sufficient interest to get involved. What is lacking is the ease of information access and guidance for the local population. This project intends to bridge that gap.
2. This challenge recognises that IT in India is well established with a large pool of talent but that the majority is yet to know about Cardano and the Catalyst funding. Given the language diversity and the statistics about the number of native speakers compared to English speakers in India, we believe that our regional language content, website and outreach activity will boost developer adoption. Cardano has a steep learning curve and it takes time to be a reasonably good Plutus developer, let alone mastering Plutus. Though there are a large number of professionals in the IT industry, almost all of them have their day jobs and are unlikely to find the time to research Cardano and learning opportunities. This solution provides a one stop place for Cardano content in regional languages for easy learning.
3. The challenge accurately describes the Indian scenario like a big heavy wheel that will take a lot of energy to get turning. This project intends to add momentum for growing the community and development teams resulting in an increase in proposals in upcoming Catalyst funds.

1. Health challenges like Covid can reduce availability of human resources and delay our delivery timeline.

[FEASIBILITY]

The key aspects of the feasibility we would like to highlight are:

• This project brings together experience of developers in Cardano, teachers and public relations together to build a comprehensive solution for reaching out to native speakers.
• Team members include those with proven knowledge and development experience in Cardano. This will ensure that the content prepared is accurate and relevant.
• Since 5 languages are covered under one umbrella it provides consistency of content across. Further the cost of content creation and delivery is lower compared to what it would be if the such effort were done separately for each language.

In previous sections, we described the solution with details. Here we illustrate the roadmap for implementing the solution.

Roadmap

Month 1 (we expect this to be around June /July 2022)

• Translate the first set (Set 1 listed under detalls) of content (enumerated in the detailed plan above) to regional languages as documents.
• Translate selected announcements published by IOG from 2020 till date.
• Design user journey and mockups for the website

Month 2

• Website development
• Set up a communication channel using discord and social media outreach.
• Share content and gather community feedback from initial members joining the communication channels.
• Continue content creation

Month 3

• Website development
• Launch website allowing discovery of content
• Media publicity about the website hosting the content and communication channel. This will cover publishing news articles in vernacular newspapers.
• Start preparation of audio/video content. This is planned as subsequent to document translation to use the output into audio and video content.

Month 4

• Launch Youtube channel.
• Continue audio/video content in regional languages.
• Update content to include latest announcements and blogs. The fundamental topics covered at the beginning are expected to be a one time effort.
• Review the Refine the website/content based
• Second round of print media advertisement about the website and content offered.

Month 5 & beyond

• Package content into a structured course for self learning for regional speakers.
• Extend the content with hands-on coding exercising (Plutus and cardano-cli) for aspiring web 3.0 developers.
• Continue updating content to include latest announcements and blogs. By this point we would like to invite community members from our interaction channels to volunteer to take forward regional content updates.

Sustainability of this project

The tech infrastructure costs for platform and production support costs (for approx 1 year) have been factored into the budget. Once deployed, we do not expect any changes with the current scope for the website.

In terms of content creation, what has been factored into the solution and spread out in the roadmap covers the foundational content about blockchain and Cardano as well as selected articles and blogs till October 2022. The foundational material prepared till then is not expected to change. However, incremental additions to translations of articles and announcements will be needed. We expect to see regional communities grow in number by then being able to help us out with incremental additions. Future Catalyst funds or other means like ad revenue of the website are options that may be considered if needed for expanding activities.

• Average compensation for translators and content creators (as 1 for each of the 5 languages) for 5 months ($750 x 5 x 5) = $18750
• 1 frontend and 1 backend developer part time for 2 months for website development ($1000 x 2 x 2 ) = $4000
• 1 Project Manager/Coordinator part time for estimate for 4 months ($750 x 4) = $3000
• Average cost for media advertisement/marketing in 5 languages ($400 x 5) = $2000
• Tech services (Website hosting, GCP,GSuite, Discord etc.) 1 year: $2000

Total = $29750

We are a team of individuals from India with experience spread across Software Engineering, Teaching, Social Entrepreneurship and Journalism & PR. This team comprises experienced Software Engineers, Plutus and Prism Pioneers, Gimbalabs PPBL member, native speakers covering five languages, members of a delivered Fund 6 project, funded proposer from Fund 7 and an ambassador in the Cardano ecosystem. Notable projects on Cardano in which our teammates are part ot the development team are:

• Adatar.me ( https://adatar.me/ ) funded through Catalyst in Fund 6
• Unsigs NFT marketplace ( https://unsigs-frontend.vercel.app/ ) through Gimbalabs project based learning initiative.

The following section provides short profiles of team members and tracks covered by them under this proposal.

Reshma Mohan

• Professional Software Engineer
• Plutus Pioneer (1st cohort)
• Prism Pioneer (currently undergoing)
• Bachelor of Technology degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering
• Ambassador to ‘Genius Yield’.
• Proposer of multiple funded proposals in Fund 7
• Language skill: Malayalam

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reshmhn/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/reshmhn

Geetha S

• Retired High School Hindi Teacher with 17+ years of teaching experience in Hindi
• Holds a Bachelor of Education (BEd) in Hindi Language and Literature
• Holds a Master's degree in Hindi Language and Literature

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/geetha-s-96bb69233/

Language skill: Hindi

Karthik Vishwanathan

• Software engineer with 11 years of experience.
• Bachelor of Technology degree in Computer Science
• Ex engineer at Amazon
• Experience in Backend and Frontend development
• Language skill: Tamil

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karthik-viswanathan-90614052

Sarod Sasidharan

• Bachelor of Technology degree in Mechanical Engineering
• CSWA certification from Dassault Systèmes issued in 2018
• Master Diploma in CADD
• Social entrepreneur
• R&D experience in the area of mobility instruments for patients and physically challenged.
• Language skill: Telugu

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarodsasidharan20091989/

Sandeep Sharma

• Software engineer with 10+ years of experience.
• Bachelor of Technology degree in Computer Science
• Experienced in backend development
• Language skill: Kannada

Ganesh

• Professional Software Engineer for over 8 years
• Plutus & Prism Pioneer (1st cohorts)
• Gimbalabs PPBL Team Member
• Bachelor of Technology degree in Electronics Engineering
• Has lead development of large scale applications
• Experience in the financial services industry

Github: https://github.com/gannith

Vinu Anil

• 20+ years of experience in journalism and public relations
• Experience working with vernacular print and visual media
• Media and PR coordinator

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vinu-anil-31924340/

[AUDITABILITY]

The details of the solution illustrates how this project will be implemented. The kind content that will be created has been enumerated. Further in the roadmap, the timeline for different deliverables have been provided. We believe that with this information the progress can be measured with tangible deliverables and the development can be tracked using the milestones in the roadmap.

The following are our success metrics

In 3 months:

Successfully launched website which allows discovery of content in regional languages

In 4 months:

More than 100 users in communication channels

In 6 months:

Observable increase in number of proposers & proposals from India in Catalyst Funds. While it is possible for that to not have a bearing on this project, given that awareness about Cardano is very less in India today, we will consider a positive correlation between the number of users accessing the regional content and increase in activity from India in Catalyst Funds, to indicate the accomplishment from this project.

Further we hope that our efforts will enthuse the community to collaborate more for building and learning Cardano. Events like hackathons and meetups are something we will try to promote throughout communication and outreach activities and those will become additional achievements.

KPIs

• Number of documents covering fundamentals of blockchain and Cardano in regional languages
• Number of blogs/articles from IOG that are covered
• Number of announcements from IOG that are covered
• Number of members joining the communication channels
• Number of twitter followers for the website.
• Number of videos in youtube channel

This is a new proposal.

SDG Rating

SDG goals:

Goal 4. Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all

Goal 9. Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation

SDG subgoals:

4.4 By 2030, substantially increase the number of youth and adults who have relevant skills, including technical and vocational skills, for employment, decent jobs and entrepreneurship

4.a Build and upgrade education facilities that are child, disability and gender sensitive and provide safe, non-violent, inclusive and effective learning environments for all

9.1 Develop quality, reliable, sustainable and resilient infrastructure, including regional and transborder infrastructure, to support economic development and human well-being, with a focus on affordable and equitable access for all

9.5 Enhance scientific research, upgrade the technological capabilities of industrial sectors in all countries, in particular developing countries, including, by 2030, encouraging innovation and substantially increasing the number of research and development workers per 1 million people and public and private research and development spending

Key Performance Indicator (KPI):

4.4.1 Proportion of youth and adults with information and communications technology (ICT) skills, by type of skill

proposertoolsdg

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