Pre-Program Progress Report on the Blockchain Innovation Hub Arbitrum Bootcamp Program

DAO Programs & Initiatives
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Hello Community,

My name is Oyeniyi Abiola Peace, and I am the CEO of the Blockchain Innovation Hub.
We are one of the grantees of the Education, Community Growth and Events (https://questbook.app/dashboard/?chainId=10&isRenderingProposalBody=true&role=builder&proposalId=0x53e&grantId=0x650b4a0dc2aec18f55adb72f13c5d95631db04be).

We are hosting a three-month hybrid blockchain development bootcamp, which includes a hackathon, to onboard quality developers into the Arbitrum ecosystem. The program has two tracks: front-end and back-end development.

As stated in our proposal, we committed to providing the community with updates on the progress of the bootcamp.

This report summarises the completed activities thus far in preparation for the BIH x Arbitrum Blockchain Software Development Bootcamp. It includes successful partnerships, event promotion, curriculum drafting, participant selection process, and judge selection. We have exceeded our registration target of 500 participants, with a total of 677 registrations.

Partnerships and Promotion

To attract participants, we partnered with various communities and exceeded our initial registration target within just one week. This approach has been proven to be the most effective. We received over 300 registrations from the following communities:

  1. GDG Ibadan DevFest 2023 - https://x.com/blockchainih/status/1730647135148712096?s=20

  2. Arbitrum Campus Connect - https://x.com/blockchainih/status/1729846995999686704?s=20

  3. OOUTech Community - https://x.com/OOU_Tech/status/1732411761587020017?s=20

  4. Tech Starters Conference by Amazing Tech Community (ATC) Africa - https://x.com/blockchainih/status/1733790662334533873?s=20

  5. Across the Niger Meetup - https://x.com/Edwin_Xploit/status/1734848781554778361?s=20

Additionally, we reached out to previous participants in our blockchain training programs, resulting in over 200 registrations.

Registration Demographics

  • Age Range:

    • 21-25: 45.8%
    • 26-30: 22.7%
    • 16-20: 20.9%
    • 31-40: 10.6%

  • Gender and Educational Level:

    • Male: 81.8%
    • Female: 18.2%
    • Tertiary Education: 95.4%

  • Preferred Learning Mode

    • Virtual: 50.7%
    • Hybrid: 33.9%
    • Onsite: 15.4%

  • Aim and Expectations of Participants after Bootcamp

    • Get a full-time job: 43.9%
    • Launch a startup: 35.3%
    • Start freelancing: 20.9%

  • Participants’ Interest

    • 96.1% of participants are willing to dedicate 3 months to the bootcamp if selected.
    • 76.5% of registered participants have a strong interest in Arbitrum, while 21.2% show some level of interest.
    • 80% are willing to dedicate at least 3 days per week to the program.
    • 73% are ready to dedicate at least 3 hours per day to the program.
    • The majority of participants have participated in internships, community service, and hackathons.
    • The majority of participants have backgrounds in Front-end Development, back-end development, Mobile App Development, or Game Development.
    • Most participants possess knowledge of JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. Some also have skills in React, Python, C#, and Solidity. However, there are also participants with no programming knowledge.

Program Awareness

Twitter Space 1

On December 8th, 2023, we hosted our first X Space (https://x.com/blockchainih/status/1733183767559176621?s=20) to create awareness of the upcoming bootcamp program, as well as guide registration.

  • Over 300 people attended the AMA.
  • The success of the first X Space has set high expectations for the second X Space, scheduled for December 15th, 2023.

Twitter Space 2

On December 15th, 2023, we hosted our second X Space (https://x.com/blockchainih/status/1735721483362595285?s=20) to create more awareness on the bootcamp program.

  • Over 30 people attended the webinar.

All our posts (combined) about the Bootcamp reach over 20,000 views on Twitter.

Curriculum Development

We have been working closely with our internal and external teams, and we are currently seeking feedback from the community on the curriculum for the Bootcamp. We are particularly interested in hearing from people with experience in developer advocacy, developer relations, developers, and other related fields. We welcome feedback on the curriculum, and you are free to leave comments on the Notion page.(https://orxng.notion.site/BIH-x-Arbitrum-Bootcamp-Calendar-Curriculum-d2f876a1df78474f85fb1f3be2241a81?pvs=4https://orxng.notion.site/BIH-x-Arbitrum-Bootcamp-Calendar-Curriculum-d2f876a1df78474f85fb1f3be2241a81?pvs=4)

Hackathon Judges

We have selected individuals who are affiliated with or have a strong interest in the Arbitrum ecosystem as our hackathon judges. These individuals have years of experience in blockchain development and community building. The judges for the hackathon are as follows:

  1. Aliu Musa is a Senior Program Manager at the Arbitrum Foundation, leading and driving strategic and innovative Business Development and community growth activities. He has diverse experience in Software Engineering and Business Development. He was the Africa Ecosystem Lead at Celo Foundation, before that, he was the Africa Manager at OKX; The World’s Leading digital assets platform with users across the world. He was also the Africa Manager at Real Items, a platform helping brands bridge the physical world with digital experiences using public blockchains to serialize any product with NFTs. He is the Co-Founder and Software engineer at DLT Africa, a platform helping to onboard millions of Africans into Web3 through training and partnerships.
  2. Uchenna Onuegbu is an Arbitrum Ambassador and blockchain professional with experience and expertise in community building, education & research with interests cutting across all verticals. He developed an interest in cryptocurrency in 2019 and started trading across Exchanges which made him realize that blockchain technology offered much more than financial freedom. Hence, he became fascinated with the blockchain and the endless solutions it can provide for traditional problems relating to finance, health, real estate, sports, and other sectors. To deepen his knowledge and skills, he obtained certifications from courses in blockchain at the University of Nicosia, Cyprus, and a Web3 Talent at Frankfurt Blockchain School Center, Germany amongst others. He has worked with key industry leaders & notable projects in different capacities where he has contributed immensely to these communities’ growth.
  3. Tochi Otuokere is a seasoned Web3 ecosystem builder with a track record of cultivating vibrant communities and fostering thriving web3 ecosystems for various brands, including Smerse, CosmoHeroes, UIOS, and CryptoSimplified. He also worked with brands such as FTTDAO to grow it from a single-country entity to a thriving organization present in over seven African countries. Tochi is also a data-driven professional with a strong foundation in statistics and a master’s degree in computational statistics. He finds fulfillment in illustrating the potential of Web3 and educating others about the decentralized future of the Internet. Through his clear communication and engaging approach, Tochi empowers individuals to actively participate in the decentralized web3 ecosystem.

Selection Criteria

As outlined in our grant proposal, we will select participants based on their level of experience, availability, interest in building on Arbitrum, and willingness to continue developing their project after the Bootcamp. Our team is currently working on finalizing the list of selected participants and sending them an email. To ensure transparency, we will also send emails to those who were not selected, explaining the reasons.

Next Steps

We appreciate feedback from the community to assist us in improving the curriculum. Additionally, we are currently scheduling the onboarding call and completing other tasks as outlined in the program schedule.

We are tagging @cattin, and @Manugotsuka for feedback.

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