Attracting New Developers

[GENERAL] Summarize your solution to the problem.

Developing content tailored to introduce new LATAM developers to Cardano and to encourage engagement through group mentoring and community activities such as project development.

[GENERAL] Summarize your relevant experience.

Thiago Nunes - Cardano Ambassador, Developer and SPO. Owner of  a digital marketing agency for more than 7 years.

Cristian Amaral - tech copywriter, 10 years of experience in content marketing. Redirecting his career to be a copywriter specialist in blockchain.

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

There is no way to attract developers from outside our current community to participate in Catalyst without first educating this audience, in order to show the benefits - both financial and motivational - of being part of the Cardano ecosystem.

We believe that exposing the idea of being a developer in a decentralized environment which is building not only the future of the internet but also a new vision of social organization can be a powerful motivator.

With that in mind, we will create tailored content to communicate with developers in Latin America. The interaction with this content will help us to identify the key motivation points for these developers.

This approach will take place as a seminar in which we will address the following topics:

• Blockchain Ecosystem and Technology
• Cardano Ecosystem
• Blockchain as a tool for social change

We believe that the last module will be responsible for connecting the developers with the sense of a higher purpose during the development of their code. In this module we will also show how important our ecosystem is to the idea of a better society. We will highlight the lack of trust in institutions as one of the biggest causes of the social problems faced today.

After the presentation, we will apply a survey whose data obtained will optimize the preparation of future events, in addition to inviting participants to the first engagement group of the seminar.

Upon arriving in the group, the devs will find guidance to self-organize and begin to experience their first glimpse of the community mindset.

For a few days we will monitor the group and offer an alignment meeting to unlock the next steps.

The goal is for the group to start their own self-managed community hackathon.

Through financial incentive, we will use ADA to set tasks with different score levels and make payments with community tools once they are completed.

When the group succeeds in completing the self-organized Hackathon, we will be ready to introduce the team to the last part of immersion in the Cardano ecosystem: Joint development of a proposal for Catalyst.

[IMPACT] Please describe how your proposed solution will address the Challenge that you have submitted it in.

This proposal addresses the following Guiding Questions:

• How do we attract developers from outside of our current community to participate in Catalyst?
• What would make it a developer motivated to grind through the docs and code no matter how hard it is to create an app?

Our proposal also addresses the following points from the Potential Directions suggested by the challenge:

• Our introductory content will be a fundamental knowledge base for the first understanding of the ecosystem.
• Our self-organized hackathon development support and mentoring group will work as a support structure for these new developers.
• Finally, the incentive structure based on the remuneration of tasks through ADA will encourage the development of the hackathon.

Finally, we are aligned with the metrics of this challenge, since our proposal addresses the information gaps during the exploration stage of these devs, in addition to creating an environment where the sense of community encourages them to interact.

[IMPACT] What are the main risks that could prevent you from delivering the project successfully and please explain how you will mitigate each risk?

Risk 

Our proposal is not engaging. 

Solution

This risk is very low, but it exists. We understand that blockchain is a very attractive technology for developers, but in my experience the average developers have a hard time trying to grasp what is happening in our ecosystem. Therefore, education is key. So if we face low engagement we’ll have to change the content. In this case, we’ll apply a survey that’ll extract insights for a realignment.

Risk

The mentors got stuck on some technical questions to support the teams during the hackaton. 

Solution

We’ll set a side extra budget to hire advisors in a specific field to help the teams.

Risk

Some groups dropped out during the self-organized hackathon phase, due to the fact that this was being attempted for the first time.

Solution

This part is a bit critical; the initial idea of the self-organized hackathons is to help us and the team to identify their strengths before they submit a proposal in the Catalyst. If some groups give up, we’ll compare them with other groups to understand if it was a mistake on our side or just accept the low engagement of the participants and move on to capture a new group.

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed plan, including timeline and key milestones for delivering your proposal.

First Month

• Content development
• Blockchain Ecosystem and Technology
• Why blockchain
• Community
• Smart Contracts
• Interoperability
• Fungible and non fungible tokens (NFTs)
• Web3
• Setting up auditing and treasury tools

Second Month

• Content development
• Cardano Ecosystem
• Mindset / Technology
• Developer Tools
• Coding Examples

Third Month

• Content development
• Blockchain as a tool for social change (Motivating DEVs through coding with purpose)
• Current state of our society (Trust Crisis)
• Economics and Incentivisation mechanics; how to create value
• DAOs and NFTs; how communities are organizing themselves
• Tools for the change - what we need to build to support these communities

Fourth Month

• Beta presentation; inviting DEVs from the ecosystem to collect feedback
• Preparing Instructions for the self-organized hackathon
• Refining the presentation

Fifth Month

• Reaching out to groups of developers, institutions or companies
• Executing 2 to 5 seminars with the intention to close 2 to 3 groups of 3 to 6 developers each
• Starting the group coordinations for the self-organized hackathons and mentoring

Sixth Month

• Continuation of the mentoring process and providing support for the groups

Seventh Month

• Continuation of the self-organized hackathon to finish the outcome 
• Starting of a proposal in Catalyst with these groups

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown.

Content Development, Research, Mentoring and Support for the 7 Months

Thiago - $2500 / per month

Cristian - $2500  / per month

In seven months: $35000

Hackathon Budget for 3 groups on the Fourth Month

$12000

Security Budget in case of needing an expert help in specific topics during the hackathon phase

$3000

In case of remaining funds from the hackathon or the security budget, we’ll spin up a new group of developers to engage in the ecosystem. If the remaining funds were too short to spin up a new group, we'll donate it to Ambassador Guild to help them with operational costs.

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide details of the people who will work on the project.

Thiago Nunes - Technologist in Analysis and Systems Development, entrepreneur with experience in the creation of several companies related to software development, including games, mobile and web systems. His most recent and relevant experience is related to the Marketing and Digital Strategies segment. He is currently Cardano's ambassador in Brazil and operator of the Ouros stake pool and Director of Operations at Cardano Warriors. 

About my History in Cardano

https://cardanowarriors.io/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/thiago-nunes-72b95327/

https://github.com/thiago-tsnnst

Cristian Amaral - tech writer/copywriter with 10 years of experience in digital marketing (more specifically in content marketing). Specialized in translating technical aspects and resources into benefits easily perceived by the readers of his texts. At the moment, he’s being introduced to the mindset of decentralized communities to become a copywriter specialized in blockchain and decentralized ecosystems.

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

[FEASIBILITY] If you are funded, will you return to Catalyst in a later round for further funding? Please explain why / why not.

Definitely. The creation of educational content is a non-stop activity, and, as the Cardano dev community grows, more content will be needed for nurturing the existing participants and for attracting new members.

[FEASIBILITY] Are you or any member of your team working on any other proposals in this Fund9?

[FEASIBILITY] Are you or your team working on any other proposals from previous Funds?

[AUDITABILITY] Please describe what you will measure to track your project's progress, and how will you measure these?

We’ll integrate auditability tools created by the community, like the treasury guild to manage transactions and Dework to create a pipeline to track different stages of this project.

On top of that I will create a spreadsheet to track the surveys received.

Project KPI

• Level of interaction with the content presented
• Number of seminar registrations
• Completion of post-seminar surveys
• Number of participants enrolled in the post-seminar mentoring group
• Self-organized hackathon creation process
• Creating a proposal in Catalyst

In order to have an easy way for the community to audit this work, we’ll  establish a gitbook and provide the link during the first Catalyst monthly report. 

[AUDITABILITY] What does success for this project look like?

New Latin American developers engage with each step foreseen in this proposal, from the self-organized hackathon to effective participation in the Cardano ecosystem, culminating in the elaboration of projects in Catalyst.

[AUDITABILITY] Please provide information on whether this proposal is a continuation of a previously funded project in Catalyst or an entirely new one.

This proposal is an entirely new one.