Hello Neareans.
“This proposal is to host a Near Ideathon for teams, especially our affiliate university clubs that have been participating in our campaigns as well as the Near University programs with a purpose to present the best ideas at the Makerere University @100 Innovation Expo event due November.”
The Blockchain Club of Uganda has been executing Near Protocol activities in Uganda which has helped us achieve enormously in the Near ecosystem. To this end, we have had quite a number of local devs, especially students graduating with Near certified developer certificates from the Near University program. That said, the Blockchain Club of Uganda plans to organize an ideathon for these especially students designed to prepare our participation in the Makerere University @100 celebration Innovation expo slated to happen in November. It should be known that the Blockchain Club of Uganda will take lead in the Blockchain side event of the week long event where different students will present blockchain use cases.
Our aim therefore is to Near at the helm of blockchain innovation among university students in Uganda. This ideathon will attract students with or without prior coding knowledge and support them so that they can hit the ground running as far as blockchain use cases are concerned. We aim to reach 100 students organised in groups to participate in this ideathon.
Flow of Events
| Time | Activity |
|---|---|
| 1-7th Oct | Advertising |
| 8-15th Oct | Team formation |
| 16th, 20th & 24th Oct | Virtual Hangouts with the teams |
| 29th Oct | Day Long Ideathon |
The first week of October(1st-7th) will be dedicated to advertising the ideathon to potential participants and these are largely Student Blockchain Clubs, community hubs as well as students with final year blockchain ideas.
We shall then embark on team formations for the next two weeks(8th-15th). Teams will be based on interests. Some of the idea interests will include solutions that drive adoption such cooperative savings and credit facilities, DAO’s, agriculture, real estates & land management systems, trade & commerce, peer to peer education and climate among others. Those with shared interests will be encouraged to join similar groups.
Thereafter, we shall have a series of preparation virtual meetups on Meet to follow up on the formed teams as they prepare their idea presentation decks and the tools they would use. There will be around three of those virtual meetups before the ideathon on the Saturday 29th of October.
The ideathon will be hybrid in nature, that is to say both physical and virtual as we shall have some of our judges from our of Uganda including Otieno from Sankore S2 Hub in Kenya and Danny from Encode Club which recently entered into a partnership with. We also hope to be joined by any team members that would be available on the 29th of October.
On the 29th, teams will present their ideas to the audience and the judges. Presentation decks will be required from every team with an idea. The judges will then choose the most relevant ideas in order of their relevance.
The first three ideas will be awarded and shall the presenting ideas at Makerere University Celebrations for 100 years dabbed Mak@100 Innovation Week Blockchain side event.
Proposed Budget
| Item | Quantity | Unit Cost($) | Total Cost($) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Advertising | 3 mediums i.e Social media(twitter,Tech blogs,University Newspaper(The Makererean) | 30 | 90 |
| Bandwidth | 1 service provider | 85 | 85 |
| Venue Hire | 1 | 120 | 120 |
| Food & water | 100 | 7.5 | 750 |
| Public Address System + Web Camera | 1 | 100 | 100 |
| Banner & Teardrops | 3 | 82 | 246 |
| Swag | 50 | 10 | 500 |
| Total | 1891 |
Proposed Rewards for participants
1st $300
2nd $250
3rd $200
Total $750
Grand total requested (1891 + 750)
= $2641
Note. The idea presentation decks will be included in the ideathon report.