Blockchain Learning Center + Coffee

Provide a community learning center attached to a crypto positive coffee shop that offers demos and classes covering a wide range of topics.

I'm a front end engineer and I have been a barista in the past. I have been inspired by the passion of the Cardano community! I've been working with many organizations within the Cardano ecosystem to refine and develop this project.

[IMPACT]

Our coffee shop will be called Beanchain Coffee. It will be a coffee shop, bakery, and roaster with ample room for people to work and study. Our goal is for this to be a community hub for any local groups that want to congregate here.

The Blockchain Learning Center will be separated from the main space by a glass wall and a door. The goal with that is to get people curious and have them come on in to see what its all about! Inside the learning center we will have demos set up along the wall, like in a science center, that will teach the basics of blockchain in a way that anyone could easily understand. Things like wallets, staking/mining, and all the things the blockchain is being used for like logistics tracking, voting, identity storage, file storage, and more. This will help passively dissolve some disinformation and get people more interested.

We'll be offering classes and workshops for those who want to dive in a little deeper. These classes start with beginner/intro level; how to use your wallet, blockchain history, how to stake with Cardano and how does it work. And they will go all the way to advanced courses; developing with Plutus, Smart contracts, token economies, DAOS, making NFT campaigns, and more. Workshops will take place in person and streaming, so that they can be viewed by as many people as possible. By doing the classes live we can address peoples questions and help provide a more complete learning experience.

We're launching a platform at blockchainlearning.center that will host the content for the workshops and many online classes. This platform allows people in the community to create courses and host them with us. We hope to create a robust community of educators and teachers that can use our platform to teach the rest of the community.

We're working with groups like Catalyst School to start developing courses. We've also developed relationships with the Arizona State University Blockchain Club, Gimbalabs, and the Arizona Science Center.

We plan to host a monthly incubator workshop, for local entrepreneurs and business owners to get onboard with the business side of blockchain technology as applied to their businesses. We anticipate this will bring more great ideas into Catalyst and help people get prepared to be successful in every aspect of their journey. This can be a stepping stone toward a more complete incubator program that we seek to develop further over time.

Our business plan is completed, we have a robust discord community, a website, social media, are beginning to construct coffee carts to start getting the word out, and we have unbounded passion for what we're trying to accomplish here.

Beanchain will be a worker directed company that give our workers 50% voting power in the organization as well as profit sharing. Our goal is to prioritize expanding to new locations and deliver blockchain learning to more people through the growing network of Beanchains. We'll be trying to put our learning centers next to Universities and colleges since this is our primary audience.

MVH

Our plan is to have Beanchains and Blockchain Learning Centers in every state and Europe but we'll have to start small. We're going to be opening one Beanchain in Mesa Arizona to start and hosting only as many workshops as we can support with a couple teachers. This will allow us to grow at a sustainable rate and make sure that we have high quality material as we do.

Target Audience

Our target audience is a little split. We want to attract those that are interested in learning about developing in the blockchain space and those that are newer to the blockchain world and may even be a little suspicious of it. We want to change the minds of those that are uninformed and help them see the good the technology can do. At the same time we'll be offering workshops on a wide range of developer focused subjects to help people grow and prosper in their careers. We think be serving these two audiences we can bring the most value to the Cardano Ecosystem.

Risk

Having a good supply of people that are willing to teach classes to make sure that we can constantly provide a high quality learning environment.

Solution

Develop relationships with local colleges and clubs that are enthusiastic about blockchain and would like to participate in getting people involved.

Risk

Sustainability and repeatability of our model. We need the learning center to be able to pay for itself and be able to scale by opening new locations and spreading across the United States and Europe.

Solution

We are working on getting funding from many sources and building revenue streams into the learning center such as the paid subscription for more advanced classes and selling blockchain merchandise like miners, hardware wallets, apparel, NFTs, etc. The online platform will allow us to sell courses which could provide a very steady source of revenue that can be used to expand.

Risk

Not reaching enough people to fill out our classes.

Solution

Build a large and inclusive community. We have been working hard to build our Discord server, social media, and our web presence. We're also directly contacting universities, clubs, and colleges to invite them to participate in our community. In addition to that we have offered discounts to schools in the area and agreed to support each other on social media. By developing strong ties to other groups in the area we will become trusted and welcoming to all the people that live here.

[FEASIBILITY]

Timeline

By 3 months we expect to:

• Curriculum partially developed
• Displays and Demos for the learning center fully researched
• One coffee cart is built and in operation; start marketing and bringing in revenue
• Have real estate contract negotiated and contractors starting work
• Select and get commitments from 6 future trainers; selected from local colleges

By 6 months we expect to:

• Shop is opened or opening very soon
• ~5 courses complete and trainers trained to deliver them
• ~20-30 courses available online
• Coffee cart in operations 5 days a week
• Displays and demos set up in the learning center. Ready to be viewed!

By 12 months we expect to:

• Incubator program operating
• Have ~10 additional classes finished
• Have the second coffee cart running 5 days a week
• Improve Learning Center; refine the way we teach, improve demos, add new content

Our hope is that this will be an entry point to the blockchain and Cardano environment for many that otherwise would not be reached and can do a lot to give blockchain a better image in peoples eyes.

Milestones

Completed

• Develop relationship with a community that can help develop curriculum (Catalyst School)
• Get an account, real estate agent, and legal representation
• Make Websites ( https://www.bchain.coffee/ and https://blockchainlearning.center/ )
• Build Discord Community ( https://discord.gg/bDmWS38Hz8 )
• Start social media ( twitter and instagram )
• Meet with the ASU Blockchain Club
• Meet with the people at ASU involved with business partnerships
• Found a location to open the shop( lease negotiated )

In progress

• Start NFT Campaign to get more funding
• Preparing to set up booth at the Arizona Science Center to help develop our content for the learning center
• Start Kickstarter campaign
• Build coffee cart
• Plan Displays and Demos that will be set up in the learning center
• Create courses and develop curriculum
• Reaching out to online communities to develop courses on https://blockchainlearning.center/

Planned

• Release first set of courses in the learning center
• Survey users to get feedback on demos and classes
• Train instructors
• Create / Find platform to host courses on (working with Catalyst School)
• Work with ASU to offer credits to students that teach classes
• Start renovation of our space to set up for shop and learning center
• Use Coffee Cart 5 days a week

My Commitment

I plan on putting about $200,000 of my personal savings into this project. To this date I’ve already contributed about $40,000 and a lot of that has gone to people within the Cardano community for help with research and development as well as community outreach.

My life's mission is to raise the floor for workers and create a business community that is more fair for the people working within it. More fair for everyone. Tools that the blockchain provides and the communities growing around it will serve this goal so I will make sure that we succeed with every ounce of energy I have.

Budget Breakdown

4 Teachers $18,800

• At 2 x 1 hour classes a day 5 days a week that is 260 hours of teaching time over the first 6 months
• 2 hours out of class time per class for prep work and communications: 520 hours
• $20/hour for classes and out of class time ($15,600)
• Assuming 40 hours training per teacher: 160 hours
• $20/hour training ($3,200)

Implementing system for hosting and distributing courses $15,000~

• Building https://blockchainlearning.center/
• Incentivizing people to make courses
• hosting, maintaining, and supporting users on site
• researching class and workshop content

This is what we'll be spending the $33,800 that we will be asking for on. We wanted to make sure to ask for a reasonable amount that would help us with the setup and operation of the learning center without asking that Catalyst pay for the coffee shop element of the business.

Other Learning Center Costs

Renovate leased space $70,000~

• 2,000 sqft at $20 per sqft $40,000electric and plumbing, flooring, ventilation, etc
• Glass separation wall between learning center and coffee shop $5,000~
• Build Demos $10,000~equipment, planning consultation by education experts
• Equipment and Furniture $15,000tables, chairs, projector or TV, misc

Utilities for our first year $5,800

• $2.90 per square foot (estimate)

We're pursuing private investment, bank loans, an NFT campaign, and crowdfunding to make up the rest of the about $400k we need in total to start and safely run the business for the first 5 years.

Funding sources secured for the rest of the business

• Founder funding(myself) 200k
• Private investment 250k loan

Funding we are seeking

• Crowdfunding (kickstarter) 100k
• SBA Loan 350k
• NFT Campaign

David Baxter

Founder, Communications, Organizer, Front End Software Engineer

https://www.linkedin.com/in/baxweb

William Burns

Coffee shop manager, Network and Systems administration

Simon Fleck

CA, Cohort member, Plutus Pioneer, IT-Consultant, Project Manager, Swarm Veteran, C4C-core,

https://github.com/Seomon4u

Other Collaborations and Partnerships

The Catalyst School was funded by Catalyst and is doing great work getting some educational materials created and helping people to put together fantastic catalyst proposals! We're working with them to develop the courses and reach people in many languages.

Gimbalabs has agreed to allow us to use some of the courses they are developing to teach project based workshops about Plutus and Tokenomics. I would anticipate working with them on many more courses as we grow.

Cardano4Climate has been a pleasure to talk to and work with over the course of the last couple months. Many from their community are beginning to get involved in ours and there's a lot of crossover in our interests considering we are both trying to make a positive impact on the world.

Building our network is immensely important to us! The power of a network increases exponentially with the number of connections. Having a robust community of passionate and kind people will allow us to provide the best educational content and make sure that our students get the chance to give back to the community and find their place within it.

We’ve found many in the community that would like to develop courses that can be offered for free and as more in depth paid courses. We’ve been reaching out to these people and building a platform for them to assemble the courses so that we can teach them as workshops and deliver them online. With our LMS at https://blockchainlearning.center/ we’ll be able to to include anyone that would like to contribute and make sure that they get rewarded for their efforts!

Developing strong relationships with local trade schools and universities has been a goal as well. As we build our incubator and curriculum, being well connected to educational institutions will be an enormous asset. We would like to train students to teach the courses and make sure they can get credits for doing so as well.

Consultants

Randall Harmon

Fundamentals of accounting, project management, engineering for web applications and all their supporting infrastructure

https://www.linkedin.com/in/randall-harmon-aa52765

Chris Casillas

Consultant from Web34Life

https://web34life.com/

[AUDITABILITY]

A few metrics we think could help us figure out how successful we've been in our mission and how we can improve over time.

Wallets Created

As part of our demo for wallets we plan on helping the user create a wallet on their phone and then airdropping a small reward to them to make it a positive experience. By tracking the number of wallets created and how much those wallets are used in the future we may be able to get a good idea about how engaged the people we bring into the network are.

Goal: 5 wallets per week in first 3 months, up to 5 wallets per day after 6 months

Sustainability

Our goal is to be financially sustainable so that we can take this model and reproduce it across the US and Europe. By paying close attention to how well the blockchain learning space pays for itself we can adjust and add new revenue streams to it if need be. We'll map out the cost of the space and its operation and weigh that against the revenue generated by it to see how well we're doing here.

Goal: Revenue to Cost ratio of 1.0 or higher

Conversion Rate

One of our goals is to get people that visit the Learning Center to see the demos to also sign up for classes and join as a member for the more advanced classes. The amount of people we get to sign up for our free and our advanced classes would be a tremendous indicator of how well we are teaching and grabbing peoples attention with the demos.

Goal: Convert 2% of the people that visit and see the demos into members.

Incubator Program Instantiation and Participation

We plan on starting an incubator program that can help people get help for their ideas and get them funded. Starting this incubator program and compiling all the tools, services, and people needed for it is a year one goal. Getting this program up and running and getting some ideas successfully developed and funded will be a metric we're tracking.

Goal: Have helped at least 2 projects get developed and funded by 12 months

Proposals Submitted from our Community

Since we'll be getting so many new people into the Cardano and greater blockchain ecosystem we will be suggesting that people with good ideas submit them to the Catalyst program. We'll also be helping them get they're proposals set up and give them the best shot at getting voted on. We should be driving a lot of new participation in the Catalyst program. Tracking how many proposals and successful projects come out of our community would be a great metric.

Success will be measured by how well we can serve the people in our local area and those online that want to learn more about the blockchain. We of course need to be self sustaining financially so that we expand the content we offer and improve our process but the primary goal is to teach people about blockchain technology and show them the good it can do. If we can show that we are accomplishing this by bringing many people into our communities, delivering many courses / workshops, and getting as many people as we can into the shop to see our demos and displays than I think we'll be very successful.

The world needs a change in a great many ways, hopefully by getting people thinking about how to make this change happen we can be a catalyst for that process.

We have a previous proposal that was unfunded even though it got enough votes. We had just asked a bit to much. To address that we've lowered the amount we're asking for this time around.

https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/381463