[DAO:0655e9c] Virtual University Campus in Decentraland - Bridg3 Metaverse Hackathon

Governance
1

by 0xb89ba583541aeba63b8553d512af24d4b4aa1373 (Swordpony)

Should the following $20,000 grant in the Sponsorship category be approved?

Abstract

We’re organizing the Bridg3 metaverse hackathon in Finland to help thousands of students learn what the Metaverse could mean for their future, and start building their own future. Students would love to have a dedicated Decentraland challenge encouraging them to build an open-source, virtual 3D University Campus to simulate how the future of learning could be done in the Metaverse. Transforming the entire learning experience.

The Good Cartel is the leading Web3 educator in Finland providing a free Web3 Masterclass with credit points. With thousands of students enrolled, it’s now time to give students the tools to start building. We have experience organizing NASA hackathons so the experience will be top-notch and memorable.

Grant size

20,000 USD

Project duration

2 months

Beneficiary address

0xB89ba583541aEba63B8553D512af24d4B4AA1373

Email address

sointu@blocklane.eu

Description

We feel Decentraland’s mission and open source mentality fit our mission perfectly, providing all students in Finland free access to start testing ideas and building within the Metaverse. It is crucial to have an open platform but also we feel the future of learning should happen in the Metaverse. Current solutions are not open and students cannot build on top of them. We want to enable students to define what, where and how their future learning journeys look like.

Decentraland Worlds Beta seems like a perfect fit for this challenge. Allowing thousands of students in Finland to start creating their own 3D virtual learning space across multiple cities. Connecting campuses and their communities. Have it available at any time for testing ideas and building demos. Yet, as this is a 1-month long hackathon process, we aim for the Virtual Campus to stay open and available for all students even after the hackathon. Giving students the power of defining the future of education but also university researchers a continuous stream of data, ideas and innovation.

Decentraland Worlds Beta will help students interact with each other, even at a distance. It provides instant collaboration opportunities between learners, teachers, researchers, and societal actors. In the future it could even be considered a National Virtual Campus where challenges can be solved together, offering new kinds of opportunities for skills and competence development.

Other hackathon partners include for example the City of Tampere and YLE, The National Broadcasting Company of Finland. Hackathon finals will be held during the Tampere Smart City Week event with a dedicated Metaverse track at the brand-new Nokia Arena. We’re expecting 2 800+ guests from over 20+ countries across Europe. Smart City Week audience is not your typical crypto degens but Web2 enterprises and city officials eager to learn what the Metaverse is and could mean for their future. We’ll have keynotes like Dr. Marwan Alzarouni, CEO of Dubai Blockchain Center (DBCC) and Marja Konttinen from Decentraland has preliminarily accepted our keynote request to showcase the inspiring Decentraland origin story. Having YLE as a partner will enable free nationwide media coverage to showcase Decentraland Worlds and what the students can build when given free rain and open-source tools. But also act as an inspiration to the Web2 audience.

TampereES is the hackathon co-organizer. Given that they are students, we can make sure their voices are heard and the hackathon is being built by the students for the students. And not aiming for profit but impact and long-lasting results. We believe this will also bring new builders and a ready student community to Decentraland.

The Hackathon website will be released shortly at bridg3.co.

More info:
The Good Cartel https://www.goodcartel.xyz/
TampereES https://tamperees.com/
Tampere Smart City Week https://www.tscec.fi/en/

Roadmap and milestones

We’ve set a clear hackathon timeline that goes like this:

  1. April - Team building support on Discord and IRL matchmaking event. 60 teams minimum participating.
  2. May 5th - Bridg3 hackathon kick-off revealing challenges and mentors. Keynotes (streamed online) and mentoring (IRL).
  3. Mentoring continues online on The Good Cartel Discord server.
  4. May 16 - Mid-way checkpoint. Keynotes (streamed online) and mentoring (IRL).
  5. May 30-31st - Final check point. Mentoring IRL and pitching training (hybrid).
  6. June 4th - 6th - Open community voting on the top 10 finalists.
  7. June 6th - Bridg3 track at Tampere Smart City Week, hackathon finals, announcing the winners and after party
  8. Hackathon solutions can and will be open and developed further with the help of mentors

Vote on this proposal on the Decentraland DAO

View this proposal on Snapshot

2 Likes
2

Hi frens! Would love everyone’s feedback on our proposal. Students are eager to enter and start building in Decentraland. But what say you, what would give this hackathon challenge an even greater impact from Decentraland’s perspective? Appreciate any suggestions :hugs:

3

Hey thanks for proposal.

Whats your history behind Decentraland ? Did you created already any articles or other content about DCL ?

Do you have any deployed scenes ?

4

Hello everyone, I’m part of the organizing team and we really want to make the event as valuable as possible for our student participants and Decentraland. So we would really appreciate to get any feedback from the community on how to make this hackathon exceptional?

5

Hi Swordpony!
This sounds like it could be a great opportunity for growth and exposure for Decentraland. I think onboarding the next generation to Web3 will be crucial for sustained growth over time. I like that you have Marja on board as a preliminary speaker. I feel like they have the experience and passion to share Decentraland with others in a way that will make a lasting impression.

I have a few concerns though… I’m not sure spending $4,000.00 for catering is the best use of DAO funds. That’s 20% of your budget, and money from the DAO to feed students (or is this for 1 VIP dinner?). I’d rather you just add that to the prize pool. Maybe add an extra $2500 for 2nd place and $1500 for 3rd place?

If you plan to be utilizing Decentraland Worlds, are you expecting the students to spend $60 (100 mana) for each name that they will need to mint in order to participate? I know students are on tight budgets, and this would be a barrier of entry for teams. I could see students wanting to participate, but just not having the extra funds to mint their name for this.

Can you give more information as to the content you would have your students be building? Is there one theme everyone will be designing for? Will they have to be building an operating game? A venue? Any time that an experience has a grand prize for a “winner” I like to know the judging criteria first.

Additionally, I haven’t seen your name around Decentraland, can you tell us your experience building here? What resources will you provide to help these teams learn? I guess I’m looking for a little more guidance to ensure that the teams will have success once they get started. Thank you :slight_smile:

3 Likes
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This seems like a great idea. I would like to see what students can create given access to worlds, some incentives and mentorship. I am also happy to see that you have a speaker from DCL to tell our story. We shouldn’t pay for energy drinks, catering, or a website, as the two existing ones can be used for marketing, landing pages, etc. What AR content will you produce and what software and equipment needs to be purchased? Something I also don’t see in the budget is the fees for the students to acquire worlds. Where would these fees come from and what happens to the worlds after the competition? Thank you for submitting a proposal. I hope to see your group building more in our metaverse.

1 Like
7

Super valuable feedback, thank you for all the comments! Here are some answers. Let me know what you think :slightly_smiling_face:

DCL experience and support for the students

I haven’t personally deployed scenes in DCL but we have a dedicated Decentraland mentor team on board for the students to utilize during the hackathon. They were the guys developing the Finnish Metagallery and Marimekko projects. They are the best in Finland and are eager to support.

Metagallery Welcome to the Finnish Metagallery | Decentraland Events
Marimekko Marimekko’s enchanting flower field | Decentraland Events

Budget

In terms of budget, you’ve raised some valid points. How does this sound?

Makes total sense to increase the prices to incentive and reward the students. Let’s allocate an extra $2500 for 2nd place and $1500 for 3rd place. Taking off from catering.

We will of course pay for the mints for students. After the hackathon the students have full ownership of their worlds, encouraging them to continue the work. Let’s allocate the misc. budget for this making sure that there aren’t any barriers to taking part. Other tech stack purchases would be mostly VR headsets for the students and possible avatar-related objects. Headsets will be used in the final event for event guests to experience the solutions. Headsets then remain at the use of the teams after the hackathon, allowing them to continue building even more immersive experiences. We’ve partnered with a local startup house that can have a dedicated space for these.

AR content was planned for the final event, showcasing challenge partners and some of the best parts of the solutions as AR in Nokia Arena, on top of VR of course. Nokia Arena will then come to life with Decentraland Logo as AR.

Please see the revised budget below.

Challenge content

Here’s the challenge description and criteria. Would love any feedback on this as well.

The virtual university campus should be designed to provide an immersive and interactive experience for students, faculty members, and visitors.

The virtual university campus should include the following features:

  • Campus Layout: Participants should design a campus layout that includes buildings, walkways, and other amenities such as cafeterias, libraries, and sports facilities.

  • Classroom or Lecture Hall: The virtual university campus should have a classroom or a lecture hall that can accommodate students and faculty members.

  • Interactive Features: The virtual university campus should include at least one interactive feature such as gamified class experience element or a virtual event.

Challenge Judging Criteria:

  • Creativity and Innovation: The level of creativity and innovation demonstrated in the design of the virtual university campus.

  • User Experience and Accessibility: The quality of the user experience provided by the virtual university campus. Participants should also ensure that the virtual university campus is designed to be inclusive and accessible to students from different backgrounds.

  • Functionality: The functionality, engagement and interactive features of the virtual university campus.

  • Technical Difficulty: The technical difficulty involved in building the virtual university campus.

BUDGET BREAKDOWN

Challenge Prices - 9 000

Marketing - 8 000

Tech stack - 3 000

1 Like
8

Thank you for your answers.

I’m afraid a few of the points you make me feel like your are not quite familiar with Decentraland at this moment, and I will be voting no.

Using your tech stack for VR headsets:
While you can use VR for Decentraland, it is still in development, and most users build and experience DCL through a desktop PC. If your budget for tech stack is now changed to $3000, I can’t imagine you could buy more than 6-8 vr headsets… and you said there will be 60 teams participating at the minimum. This does not seem like a good use of funds when the vr client is not currently being developed. As a former educator, providing 6-8 vr headsets for 60 teams sounds like there will be bottleneck issues even allowing them to all access these headsets in an equitable fashion. (I can imagine lines of teams waiting to use the vr headsets) Have you used Decentraland on a VR headset yet? If you are using VR for your final event, it would be reassuring to know that you have already familiarized yourself with using DCL Worlds in conjunction with VR.

We will of course pay for the mints for students. Let’s allocate the misc. budget for this making sure that there aren’t any barriers to taking part.

If you require 60 teams at the minimum, and they need to mint a DCL name for 100 mana per team, this is 6000 mana in total, which at today’s price is $3780.00. At this point, you do not have the funds to do what you are saying unless you take from another area depicted in your grant.

Your idea is a great one, but I’m afraid it just needs to be a little more streamlined for me to vote on it.

2 Likes
9

Thanks for the quick response.

I agree with canessa and suggest regrouping with the mentors to create a more plausible roadmap.
With the release of the new SDK the VR client is not functional and we currently don’t have a path for developing VR. The students would need computers that meet the minimum hardware requirements to be able to build in DCL and guests would also need access to PCs and big screens to be able to view the content.

I think this is a great idea but it needs to be polished with more details on the agenda and how all expenses will be covered.

10

Thanks for the input.

We’d really love to do this with the students. I know we can deliver value and great outcomes. I haven’t had the opportunity to build in Worlds yet so I totally get it that our proposal doesn’t reflect the level of knowledge needed. That is why we have our mentors onboard.

Is it ok if we chat with our DCL mentors and polish the proposal according to your feedback? Or more like this is a no and please don’t apply again? Don’t want to burden the community :slightly_smiling_face:

11

Sointu,

Great questions… I guess if you’re wondering if you should try again, I would just dig deeper into:

“What is your why?”

Are you trying to get new users into Decentraland?
Are you trying to get students interested in VR?
Are you trying to secure funding to build your virtual campus?

If your “Why” still supports Decentraland in a manner that is going to build the platform in a genuine way, then I’d say talk to your mentors and come back and try again. But it sounds like you haven’t spent a lot of time here, and to be honest, that shows in your proposal. The people who are voting here in the DAO are passionate about Decentraland. They also tend to want to support projects who have already shown they have dedicated time and energy into this world.

If you would like to take a tour, meet some active users, and just dig a little deeper into what Decentraland is like, feel free to reach out to me on Twitter (I’m @canessadcl). I know there are a lot of people who would be happy to show you around our world :slight_smile:

12

Thanks for your patience, I appreciate the guidance no doubt :slight_smile:

We’re definitely aiming to get students to build within DCL. This will be an extremely valuable and important learning experience for them and they get to keep their lands which will support their DCL journey long after the hackathon.

We see this also as a stepping stone for the universities to build a virtual campus in DCL. That would be after the hackathon and Universities would fund their own project. If and when this happens, it will be a big deal for the entire education landscape in the Nordics. And valuable message in itself that DCL wants to support new ways of learning and co-creating with students.

We see immense brand value and student onboarding opportunities here. That said, this is not a financial project but a genuine way to build awareness and provide a platform for students to build. Which is our mission in Finland.

I’m personally a frequent DCL event visitor but I hope my lack of technical skills wouldn’t be a barrier since we have the best mentors available. If DCL is looking to onboard new users, naturally they are not (yet) part of the DAO nor have the ready experience. But everyone needs to start somewhere.

We’ll have a chat with our mentors tomorrow :blush: