Web3 and Metaverse Journalism Hackathon Sponsorship

by 0x511a22cdd2c4ee8357bb02df2578037ffe8a4d8d (ginoct)

Should the following Tier 4: up to $60,000 USD, 6 months vesting (1 month cliff) grant in the Community category be approved?

Abstract

This proposal is to ask the DAO funding to organize, participate, and list Decentraland as sponsor and co-organizer of a web3 journalism hackathon to be held in Buenos Aires, Argentina in August 2022 in the context of the Media Party, a media and technology conference. The plan includes partnering with ICFJ (International Center for Journalism), hosting talks, and organizing a web3 journalism hackathon with prizes for winners. We would like to invite as speakers and mentors, members from the Decentraland community to talk about the possibilities the metaverse and DAOs as organizational structures could provide to journalists and independent media.

Grant size

20,000 USD

Beneficiary address

0x0b30f5f1A39C4899f312c9466c516EAC43d71A42

Description

A two-day hackathon hosted and sponsored by ICFJ and the Decentraland DAO at Hacks/Hackers’ Media Party in Buenos Aires 2022. The activity will be focused on the possibilities that the Web3 ecosystem (Tools, communities, funding, and incentives) could provide to journalists and independent media projects. Some topics we are planning to address:

• Metaverse journalism
• Media DAOs
• Decentralized tools for journalists
• Token Funding
• Token-gated content
• Token incentives for collaborators

The plan is to invite 5 speakers that will also serve as mentors on the Hackathon, that could talk about all these topics. Potential candidates are:

• Laurent Bainier - 20mint.fr Web3 project from the french magazine 20minutes
• KevinOnEarth - Decentraland Report
• Reporters without borders - Uncensored Library Project (Grant funded by Decentraland DAO)
• Tinshui Yeung - ICFJ Fellow researching web3 journalism
• Know someone who is doing cool stuff around web3, metaverses, and journalism? Let us know in the comments!

Why this event?

Hosting a hackathon in the context of the Media Party is natural since Buenos Aires is going through a Crypto Revolution, has a strong community, and is becoming one of the leading crypto capitals in the world. Projects like Proof of Humanity, Kleros, POAP, Decentraland, OpenZeppelin, HardHat, and Muun all have roots in Buenos Aires. Furthermore, Media Party has been the most innovative forum for journalism and technology discussions in LATAM for the last 10 years. Like the web3 movement, Media Party is a community-first event, focused and organized by independent members, and is also a hands-on conference where people come to learn by doing and interacting with others.

Some of the previous and current sponsors of the Media Party have been: Mozilla Foundation, Meta, Google, ICFJ, Open Knowledge Foundation, and Omidyar Network. We believe that listing Decentraland as a sponsor of the event could raise awareness about the project to an audience (Journalists and media people) who talk about the metaverse but never really experienced it.

Why the Decentraland DAO?

Let's face it, journalists talk a lot about the Metaverse but most of them never experienced it. We would like to put this project right in front of them, with all the complexities and potential that an open-source, community ran project have. It is also interesting since Meta is going to be sponsoring the event and they have a lot of journalist-related projects. We want to show that there is another way of thinking about the internet and how the information flows. And lastly, we believe it would be a nice place to showcase the Community Grants program to content creators and media outlets from all over the world.

Specification

The total cost of this event, including travel expenses (Flights & hotel), production costs, GMF (Goodies, merch, and food), and hackathon winner prizes is estimated at $40k. Since we would be partnering with ICFJ, they will provide $20k and the Decentraland community would provide the other $20k

Budget breakdown

Personnel

Gino Cingolani (Decentraland DAO / Media Party) Decentraland Governance Squad Product Lead, Media Party Line-up Programmer.

Maggie Farley (ICFJ)
ICFJ Director of Knight Fellowships. Supporting innovative digital journalism. Former Google News Lab; Ex-LA Times, edtech Lucky Grasshopper, AU prof.

Mariano Blejman (Media Party) Media Party Director and former Knight Fellow Journalist

Roadmap and milestones

The event will be held in late August in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The path to the event will be as follows:

• Last week of June June: Sending out invitations to speakers
• Last week of July: Goodies and Merch order
• 25-27 August: Event
• Hackathon Prizes Payout: 50% the first week of September - 50% the first week of December (This will be made this way since it's a 6 months vesting contract.)

Vote on this proposal on the Decentraland DAO