Cardano developer club in Uni

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

After many years of teaching in the university and regularly discussing with employers, we realize that IT and blockchain human resources are still very limited (detail data). Major reasons for this include:

• Lack of testing environment available in the University for Developers to practice writing blockchain applications.
• Lack of mechanism to motivate and encourage students to pursue their passion to turn ideas into products.
• Students (developers) now often learn about ETH/Polkadot/Near/Solana/Cosmos because these platforms have big promotions.
• Students (developers) interested in blockchain lack teammates to share ideas and co-work on big projects.
• Students know little about Catalyst and often apply for funding according to the traditional model.

We will form a Cardano developer club at University:

• In this club, there are Cardano labs (nodes on test-net, nodes on main-net, Plutus playground...) for developers to have a test environment. where they can deploy any dApp as they prefer.
• This is where blockchain enthusiasts can find friends with similar passions and interests, building dApps together.
• In this club, there are regular seminars to share Cardano blockchain knowledge among community members.
• We will also organize hackathon events to encourage Developers to do in-depth research.

With the above plan and voting support from the community as well as positive support from University, We believe that many dApps will be developed in the Cardano ecosystem. Increasing the number of Cardano blockchain developers. Realize startup ideas on the Catalyst platform.

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

With our support environment (policy support from the university and a group of core lecturers involved) and the implementation orientation of the project. We'll provide a favorable developer experience (Multi lab exercises, sharing knowledge, hackathon, blockchain events...) These activities will motivate developers and allows them to concentrate on creating successful apps.

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

At the time of writing this proposal, Below are potential risks that we have foreseen:

• Equipment becomes obsolete over time: They need to be maintained and upgraded. We will ask for a reciprocal fee from the university for this.

• Venue limitation: Universities in Vietnam normally do not reserve space to build labs and clubs, but with the success of the Catalyst Events 4 Vietnam Students project in Fund7, we have built trust and worked with faculties in 2 universities. They agreed to provide rooms and lecture halls to organize these events.

• Coinciding with other faculty activities: We will discuss and adjust accordingly.

• Programming languages are difficult to learn so the number of students participating is limited: our solution is to create small study groups and accompany each group to train them to become a pioneering force. They will be the first cohort to support the incoming students.

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

For the successful implementation, we have the following detailed plan

First month

• Design of the Lab (equipment, brand identity design, content of exercises in the lab)
• Planning for the program (Introduction to programming languages, integration, dApp development practice, Hackathon, seminars)
• Establishing Core-team (Lectures and selected outstanding students).
• Select Universities, and get approval from University for permission to implement.
• Create regulations and operating procedures for the club,

2nd month

• Build exercises for labs.
• Writing practical manuals for Developers in each exercise.
• Creating detailed plans for other activities (hackathon, seminar, sharing knowledge...)
• Event promotion, member selection

3rd month

• Lab decoration and interior (table and chair, aircon, fan). Aircon and Fan are considered to be paid by University.
• Build Lab (deploy laptop, VPS, internet).
• Put the Lab into operation
• Study/Lab group forming
• Organize "Introduction to programming languages on Cardano blockchain" event

4th month

• Organize a seminar to share knowledge among developers in the club.
• Build some dApps, and integrate them with web/mobile samples.

5th month

• Practice dApp development, Integrate with web/mobile platforms.
• Organize second seminars to dress the concerns collected from activities in 4th & 5th month
• Organize events to introduce Catalyst to developers, support developers to submit ideas

6th month

• Hosting a seminar where the speakers come from the developer community to share their challenges and successes.
• Organizing hackathon events to encourage developers to study deeper, and more engagement among the members.
• Project completion report.

How our team manages the workload among funded projects:

• Many of our projects use community resources. With these projects, the core team will focus on building a mechanism to encourage people from the community to participate and ensure the quality of the output.
• Some of the work in the projects will be outsourced such as marketing, content design, event preparation, and survey implementation.
• The core team will hold weekly meetings with project managers to capture progress updates, barriers, and solutions.

We also apply these solutions to handle the workloads:

• Create a full list of projects and processes with the responsibility of each member
• Define the timeline and scope of each task in projects, set the priorities for each task, visualize progress and set realistic deadlines.
• We do analyze the workload of our team to determine the workload of the entire team and individual team members

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown.

Based on the items mentioned in the timeline, the budget is calculated as follows - detail in google spreadsheet format is available here

In the first month:

• Lab design (Cardano branding, Standee, backdrop) $1.000,00
• Club content planning ( Programming language intro, integration, dApp,..) $1.280,00
• Forming core team, select University, getting approval from university $480,00
• Creating procedure to operate the club, building regulations $1.280,00

In the second month:

• Creating 07 exercises $1,280
• Creating Lab guide instructions (step by step) $2,240
• Creating a detailed plan for other activities (hackathon, seminar, sharing knowledge...) $4,480
• PR and selecting members $480

From the third month to the fifth month:

• Budget for 05 laptops in Lab $5,000
• Budget for 08 Virtual Private Servers (VPS) (05 Productions and 03 Relays ) on Cloud in 06 months $4,800
• Electric Cost- This will be paid by University
• Budget for Internet connection $200
• TV/Projector $1,500
• Budget for Lab furniture (table, chair, board) $1,000
• Buiding labs (testnet, mainnet, plutus playground...) $960
• Lab supporter/Assistance $3,150
• Cardano Programing language introduction $960
• Buiding a dApp, Integration with web/mobile template examples $1,920
• Hosting 03 seminars $4,320
• Organize Hackathon (planning, organizing, prize for winners, gift for judges) $3,000
• Catalyst introduction to developer $640

Project Management $2,080

Budget for Marketing $2,500

Total: $44,550

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

The team:

Nguyen Anh Tien, the founder of the VILAI stake pool, and a computer science expert working in the Cardano/Crypto space since 2018. Deploying many payment systems for major banks, financial institutions, and telecommunications in Vietnam

•   LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tienna/
•   Twitter: https://twitter.com/tiennganh
•   Email: tienna@gmail.com
•   Telegram: t.me/tiennguyenanh
•   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tiennguyena

Nguyen Van Hieu, founder of HADA stake pool, member of Plutus Pioneer Program, and Lead Technical Support at many successful startups.

•   Email: nvhieu1978@gmail.com
•   Telegram: t.me/nvhieu1978
•   Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nguyen-van-hieu-b4410121b/
•   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hieu.nguyenvan.794628

Do Ngoc Minh, Computer Science Researcher, and Lecturer at the Information Technology Institute, Vietnam National University, Hanoi. Advisor for Open Educational Resources (OER) programs of UNESCO, ASIA, and Vietnam.

•   LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dongocminh/
•   Twitter: https://twitter.com/AmMinhDo
•   Email: minhdn@vnu.edu.vn
•   Telegram: t.me/amminhdo

Hoang Van Thong, Lecturer (since 2001) and Dean of Faculty of Information Technology (since 2020), University of Transportation and Communications, computer science experts, developed many websites

•    Fields research: fuzzy logic, soft computing, data mining, machine learning.
•    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thong-hoang-van-28261b227/
•    Email: thonghv@utc.edu.vn
•    Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thonggtvt

Trinh Van Chung, founder of the DEVMASTER ACADEMY, Dean of Faculty of Information Technology – Nguyen Trai University.

•    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chungtrinhj/
•    Email: chung.tv@daihocnguyentrai.edu.vn
•   Telegram: https://t.me/chungtrinhj

Nguyen Kim Sao, Lecturer (since 2011) of Faculty of Information Technology, University of Transportation and Communications, received a Ph.D. in system information at the Vietnam National University, Hanoi (since 2021), data hiding experts, developed many applications. 

Fields research: watermarking, data hiding.

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nguyen-kim-sao/
• Email: saonkoliver@utc.edu.vn 
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nguyenkim.sao

Cao Thi Luyen, Lecturer (since 2001) of the Faculty of Information Technology, University of Transportation and Communications, received a Ph.D. in mathematical assurance in computational systems at the military academy of science and technology (since 2018). developed many applications. Fields research: watermarking, data hiding, machine learning, blockchain. 

• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/luyen-cao-11a846241/ 
• Email: luyenct@utc.edu.vn 
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Mai Nguyen
• Cardarno account: cardano.ideascale.com /luyenct 

Nguyen Duc Du, Lecturer (since 2001) and Director of Library Information Center (since 2020), University of Transportation and Communications, computer science experts, developed many application

• Fields research: fuzzy logic, soft computing, data mining, machine learning.
• Email: nducdu@utc.edu.vn
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nducdu

Pham Dinh Phong, Lecturer (since 2020) at the Faculty of Information Technology, University of Transportation and Communications, received a Ph.D. in Computer Science at Vietnam National University, Hanoi (since 2017). Job skills: application development, database administration, and infrastructure and service management. Research interests: fuzzy models, soft computing, data mining, machine learning.

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

We have a vision for a project that can be self-financed or partially funded by the University. With the characteristics of the project, a part of the project may apply for funding in the next round.

[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 will track the success of this project by measuring the following metric :

• Total number of developers who get involved with the club
• Total number of developers who are going to use labs
• Total number of Proposals summited to ideascale in the first round
• Total number of developers who join the Seminar, sharing sessions
• Total number of developers who participate in the hackathons

Our KPIs should be:

• 30 developers using the labs in the first 06 months.
• 1800 hours lab time in the first 06 months.
• 100 developers join clubs
• 10 Project submitted to ideascale
• 150 students attending the seminar and sharing sessions
• 15 developer participating the hackathons

These KPIs along with the event's photos/videos and others materials will be published on our website (cardano2vn.io) a few days after the event is complete. We will provide monthly reports on github (https://github.com/cardano2vn) for the community.

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

After 6 months of implementation, the project will successfully build a Cardano developer club in the university. This is a positive environment that helps:

• Around 30 developers use the lab regularly in the first 6 months, the total expected usage time is 1800 hours ( 3 hours/session, 2 sessions/week, 10 weeks) = 60 hours x 30 developer=1800 hours.
• It is expected that at least 10 dApps will be released in the first 6 months.
• Successfully building a set of regulations for the community to participate in and operate the club, ensuring the sustainability of the club in the long run.
• successfully building the operation processes and document format so that subsequent courses can take advantage and optimize.

Along with the school's policy on developing human resources programming on blockchain and the growing demand of employers, this is a solid foundation for the club to operate sustainably.

The club is expected to last for at least 3 years. there will be hundreds of developers experiencing this positive. this is the incubation environment for future dApps.

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

This is a new proposal

Additional information:

We had successfully implemented the project Catalyst Events 4 Vietnam Students, Through this project, we saw the demand and potential from students in the blockchain field at universities, so

This proposal and "Cardano developer courseware in Uni" proposal are very practical for potential developers in the near future.

This proposal may not only target one university but could be used as a sample framework for other higher education providers wishing to expand the Cardano ecosystem into their teaching syllabus at a faster phase. 

Our gratitude for your reading time up to this point and your power in the voting round would be the most vital support for this proposal. Thus, we have a chance to deliver these exciting Cardano blockchain programming languages to university students at the earliest stage.

Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Rating

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