Polkadot Blockchain Academy - funding and reimbursement for costs associated with Wave 4 in Hong Kong.
On behalf of the Polkadot Blockchain Academy (PBA) I am posting this treasury proposal for funding of the fourth wave of the Academy. The PBA will run from January 3rd to February 3rd, 2024 and will be held at Cyberport in Hong Kong. We are also working in partnership with the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. The program has selected and is enrolling 90 students, 50 developer track students and 40 Founders Track students. The goal of the Polkadot Blockchain Academy is to help speed the adoption of Polkadot by seeding the ecosystem with educated developers and aspiring Polkadot ecosystem team founders. Currently we offer in person education such as the previous course held at UC Berkeley, we are also creating online content and have recently made the developer track syllabus materials available for all online. Below is a link to the proposal in detail. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ErgTFUaj4ct5OuTm\_6fnRN96HpKE3ZhtB6FF4EKZsYM/edit
Comments (8)
Dear Colleagues! Thanks for sharing the document. Access via the link is limited, and sent a request to share.
@kasper_sky rookie error sorry, shared to all with the link.
Hi hi, thank you for posting this! A few questions I have on the proposal:
@RTTI-5220 (POLKADOT)
Hi Raul,
Thankyou for your questions, answers below, please let us know if you require more clarity on any of them.
Q; Can you provide some reasoning on choosing Hong Kong as the location for this cohort?
A; We consider many factors when selecting a cohort location, proximity to talent, regional regulatory landscape and outlook, safety, human rights, geopolitical scenario, proximity to academic partner potentials, alignment with broader Polkadot strategy and others. Hong Kong has shown itself to tick the boxes of more or less everything we have considered.
Hong Kong is also a first step for us towards Greater China, where we see a lot of potential for the future of the PBA
Finally we were able to lock a partnership with a very strong academic partner, PolyU ranked number 1 in Blockchain in Coindesk ranking 2022
Q; Are participants of the Founders Track included in the total amount to attendees?
A; Yes, circa 90 students total
Q; What is included (free) for them during the track?
A; We cover student accommodation, half board and all costs associated with delivering the course and a small amount of PBA swag.
Q; Can you provide more granularity regarding the Ops Costs for the team? It seems this includes tools and related expenses: any chance to have more details of this?
A; To operate the PBA as an independent entity we have SaaS costs such as Google Suite, Asana, Notion, Adobe Creative Suite, Hubspot, Password management software but will also incur some recurring and one-off service costs such as accounting, Employer of Record fees, audits, specialty legal help, etc. As of now we are able to receive several services in-kind such as legal and IT help, but we don’t anticipate these services to be free forever.
Q; Do you have specific rates for instructors that are not covered by their companies/organisations?
A; This wave we have few independent instructors who are not affiliated with the ecosystem, parachains or Parity. Their fees are agreed on a case by case basis. In the future we are planning to introduce a standardized faculty fee structure based on an education fellowship with a ranking system.