CPS Proposal: Intensive ICON Development University Program (Courses, Workshops, Seminars, and Hackathon!)

[ICONDAO]

Hello, everyone.

As some of you may know, the ICON DAO team has been operating an ICON blockchain program at Vietnam National University’s IT career training center. Since its launch last year October, we have been blessed with the opportunity to influence hundreds of engineering students on ICON technology and cryptocurrency. While last year’s focus was to reach as many students as possible, this year the focus is on turning those student numbers into tangible real projects on the network.

We would like to take the program to the next level by taking a more intensive approach and focusing primarily on project development. The new ICON syllabus will feature double the amount of courses, triple the amount of dev workshops and events, and ultimately culminate into an open campus-wide hackathon where students are required to build applications for ICON network. Ambitious, yes. Demanding, also yes.
Expanding our program to this scale requires additional resources and as such we are interested in applying our Devera team for CPS and would like your thoughts.

Project Name

Intensive ICON Blockchain Development Program (University Courses, Workshops, Seminars, and Hackathon)

Category

Community Activities (Educational and Development)

Project Duration

6 months

Description

Devera is an IT academy and career training center at Vietnam National University. The aim of Devera is to provide students with the knowledge, certification and hands-on experience needed to successfully enter the working world.

Since October 2020, Devera has integrated a blockchain technology program into their curriculum entitled, “Blockchain Programming on ICON Network” in effort to provide Vietnamese students with the skills in blockchain programming to develop Smart Contract (SCORE) and dApps on ICON Network. As a part of the November 2020 - March 2021 syllabus, Devera has conducted 1 seminar, 6 workshops and 4 Blockchain Programming on ICON Network courses, directly introducing over 200 student engineers to ICON.

For this year, Devera aims to expand and improve the program by adjusting the curriculum to meet the following objectives:

1. Primarily focus on students developing projects for ICON Network and building developer portfolios.
2. Increase student numbers and direct contributions to ICON.
3. Create more opportunities for the general public to learn blockchain technology through ICON.

In order to achieve those objectives and maximize value, this year’s curriculum will deliver:

• Workshops: 12
  Bimonthly workshops aimed at instructing students on the fundamental technologies and emerging trends, while allowing them hands-on experience in developing ICON’s blockchain and services.

• Seminar: 1
  A free and open seminar held at Vietnam National University to introduce ICON blockchain technology and ICX cryptocurrency to the general student population.

• Courses: 4
  . Fundamentals of ICON Blockchain Technology Course.
  . Mobile Development and Integration with ICON Blockchain Course.
  . Web Front-end Development and Integration with ICON Blockchain Course.
  . Back-End development and ICON Blockchain Course.
  . Course structure example (previous Fundamentals Course):

• Hackathon: 1
  A university-wide hackathon held at Vietnam National University where students will use the knowledge they gained during the year to build applications for ICON network and compete for prizes. Required for Devera students and open to all students of Vietnam National University to maximize participation.

We are seeking CPS support to cover the following major activities in the ICON programming curriculum:

1. 12 ICON Workshops (2 per month): $22,800
   Operational costs to conduct 12 workshops across 6 months:

• Staff:

  • Instructors: 2 x 12 workshops x $200 = $4,800
  • Marketing Team: $1,500 x 6 months = $9,000
  • Administrative Staff: $500 x 6 months = $3,000

• Marketing(Offline & Online)

  • Design works, social media management and advertising(flyers, billboards, posters etc): $3,000
  • ICON branding and promotional materials(t-shirts, stationary etc): $3,000

2. University-wide ICON Seminar: $10,400
   Operational costs to plan and conduct a large scale seminar at Vietnam National University:

• Staff

  • Seminar Speakers: 4 x $100 = $400
  • Videographer & Photographer: $1000
  • Marketing Team: $1,500
  • Administrative Staff: $500

• Auditorium rental: $4,000

• Marketing(Offline & Online)

  • ICON branding and promotional materials: $3,000

3. Blockchain Programming on ICON Network Courses: $25,000
   Operational costs to run 4 continuous ICON courses:

• Staff

  • Instructors: 4 x $1,500 = $6,000
  • Marketing Team: $1,500 x 6 months = $9,000
  • Administrative Staff = $500 x 6 months = $3,000

• Student scholarships: $100 x 10 students x 4 courses = $4,000

• Marketing(Offline & Online)

  • Design works, social media management and advertising: $3,000

4. Vietnam National University Student Hackathon: $21,000
   Operational costs to hold a university ICON blockchain hackathon:

• Staff

  • Mentors & Support Team: $2,000
  • Videographer & Photographer: $1,000
  • Marketing Team: $1,500 x 2 months = $3,000

• Grand prizes and participation gifts: $10,000

• Hall rental space: $3,000

• Marketing(Offline & Online):

  • Design works, hackathon website and advertising: $1,000
  • Branding and promotional materials: $1,000

Total Budget

32,000 ICX

Milestones

Month 1:
Workshop 1 - 05/06
Workshop 2 - 05/20
Seminar 1

Month 2:
Workshop 3 - 06/03
Workshop 4 - 06/17
Course 1 Launch (ICON Fundamentals Course) - June
Course 2 Launch (Mobile development course)- June

Month 3:
Workshop 5 - 07/08
Workshop 6 - 07/22

Month 4:
Workshop 7 - 08/05
Workshop 8 - 08/19
Course 3 Launch (Web development course - Front End)- August
Course 4 Launch (Web development course - Back End)- August

Month 5:
Workshop 9 - 09/02
Workshop 10 - 09/16

Month 6:
Workshop 11 - 10/07
Workshop 12 - 10/21
Hackathon

Team Name

Devera

Team Email

hello@devera.vn

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While we would usually support this program ourselves, most of our team resources are currently allocated to working on our more high priority projects such as BTP, BalancedDAO, Optimus etc this year. We believe this is a special program and would like the opportunity to expand the team and program to continue this initiative strongly. Please let us know your thoughts and any questions you may have. Thank you.

[Yeol]

I thought it was a good thing and I voted .
I think there is a need to reduce the cost.

I think the icx value will go up.

[ICONDAO]

Hi Yeol, thanks for taking the time to read and respond.

You are right that ICX pricing could possibly go up, we would of course adjust monthly if there is a big difference. Just for consistency purposes, I changed the budget in the proposal to reflect our request in USD. Is this better?

[Yeol]

It is supported by icx, so the old one is better.If funds are spent and left, I think you can return the icx left over.

[budw1ser]

Fantastic idea, nice to see you’re pushing forward and trying to expand the program! This is exactly what’s needed if we’re to see greater adoption and more building on the network. These are the first steps needs in onboarding more developers. They may be still students but I’ve no doubt there will be a few among them that will go on to create great things on the network.

Definitely have my vote anyway. I’m a little jealous there was nothing like this near me when I was in college! Look forward to seeing the CPS submission. Fingers crossed it gets approved

[ICONDAO]

Hi Budw1ser, thanks for checking out our proposal! With ICON’s currently developer friendly environment, especially with CPS, this is an opportune time for a hackathon.

We will be submitting the CPS application today.

[pyCyber]

There is too much money spent on marketing. I believe this could be cut down. Marketing team seems to always have a bigger budget than the instructors teaching.

Also, I don’t think web development course and mobile development course should be included. It is up to the university to teach them or for the developers to learn it themselves for the 4th month. That should be a PRE-REQUISTE. Otherwise, there could always be starter code for them to boot strap and launch from there.

[Fezbox]

This is great but from the way it reads it very much directed at new talent learning at the moment, correct me if I got that wrong. I want to see hackathons run now like siacoin are doing with so much innovation coming through right away after the hackathon events.

This is a lot of money for what appears to be a very long term payoff. I would like to see these events onboard exsisiting Devs.

Again opologies if I have misread this.

[ICONDAO]

Hi PyCyber, thanks for reviewing. To put it in perspective, in 6 months marketing must be done for a total number of 46 ‘events’ (workshops, classes, seminar and hackathon). Is it that you believe paying $1,500 per month for marketing is too expensive? Or too much in relation to the instructors?

The marketing teams are fairly larger because last year’s pilot course showed us how much on-the-ground marketing is needed to conduct university events. A lot of hours are spent on campus handing out flyers, attending university functions to reach students, putting up billboards etc as well as all the online marketing and social media management necessary. This is the only program in the entire country that teaches about ICON so marketing has to be a bit aggressive and work more hours to produce the numbers we are looking for.

I’m not sure if I understand your second point correctly, but the courses we are instructing are not general web and mobile development courses, the university already provides general courses like that. The courses we provide are for students to specialize in ICON development so our courses are ‘Mobile Development and Integration with ICON Blockchain’ and ‘Web Front-end Development and Integration with ICON Blockchain’.

[ICONDAO]

Hi Fezbox, thanks for checking our proposal out. You are correct that this will have a long term pay out but there is also short term gain. It ends in a hackathon, after-all.

We are a team that has tried our hand in onboarding existing developers and projects, and in our experience (and what we have learnt from seeing the previous ICON hackathon as well) we have found this way more worthwhile for our team and our mission.

1. We can train students to be ICON developers today rather than wait for others to join tomorrow.
2. Our team works directly with ICON’s core developers. By training young developers ourselves there is a standard level of quality and a lower barrier of entry that can be guaranteed to these young developers when compared to new ‘existing’ developers.
3. This is more of a hands-on-approach to conducting a hackathon. We are directly involved in training and mentoring the participants through this journey. So at the end of the semester there is a certain number of projects that are guaranteed to be produced. If even only 1/4th of our students this year participate that’s still over 50 projects in 6 months… That’s as short term as you can get.

But as you know there are many ways to skin a cat. This is our way and other teams are welcome to create their own hackathons. Then together maybe we would have as many hackathons per year as Sia coin.

Until then, this is the only ICON hackathon planned this year.

[Fezbox]

Thank you for the response. Makes perfect sense.

[Spl3en]

Is your course going to be updated for ICON2 ? For instance using Java instead of Python, or goloop instead of tbears.

[ICONDAO]

Yes that’s correct. The contents of our courses will be updated to reflect the technology. Our team is also working on ICON 2.0 documentation as we go so there will be some overlap on the soon to be revamped icondev.io portal to instruct developers on how to work with ICON 2.0. So what developers will learn from icondev.io, our students will also learn at length.