Apologies for missing the deadline for the November Report. It appears to have not been saved so I will repeat it here and add on for December.

We were hoping to complete the Hackathon activities in the end of October but the student groups we had recruited were having trouble with completing their projects. Some of the students told us they needed more time / it was a bad time of the semester, others just stopped responding. It was clear to us that holding a closing workshop would not be very productive and leave most of the students behind. This was a major setback for us.

Our response was to offer an extension for the projects and incorporate the closing of the event into the HackIllinois event which will happen in the Spring. We believe by incorporating these projects as a category in the larger general Hackathon we can get even more students to participate in our closing activities. We can also contribute positively to the campus community and increase awareness of Cardano and Urbit as contributors to the event.

We have now solved some of our logistical problems. We have gotten in contact with the Hack Illinois Organizers and will be joining that larger event as a Track Prize Sponsor. Hack Illinois will take place February 24-26 and being part of this weekend will give us more access to a larger pool of students interested in learning about Cardano and Urbit. We will restart our Workshops in early February and hold the competition during the Hackathon.

Apologies for missing the deadline for the November Report. It appears to have not been saved so I will repeat it here and add on for December.

We have been honing in on how to encourage responsible crypto policy while positioning ourselves to be a non-profit organization and establishing a solid framework. We had a meeting with our law firm last month to discuss what activities we are allowed to engage in, the amount of "lobbying" we are allowed to do as opposed to "educating", and the way we can advocate for good blockchain standards without specifically endorsing any candidate or piece of legislation. All of our materials should be reconciled in the next month and we should be able to provide a close-out report.

As an organization we have also been continuing to work with our community partners to offer educational programming. This month we hosted a blockchain attorney with cybersecurity expertise to talk about what happened in the FTX collapse and surrounding regulatory issues. We hope to continue offering these programs through the Champaign Blockchain Meetups and next year's Illinois Blockchain Summit.

• 12/20 - We actually had a meeting with one of our attorneys today to go over the paperwork. He had a few additional questions about how we will structure the organization to make sure that we will prove to the IRS that our organization is Educating the community about Blockchain issues and not doing any sort of prohibited Lobbying. We are planning to file the 501(h) Election form that shows how a negligable percentage of our funding is going to pay for expenditures that could be interpreted as trying to influence legislators or legislation. So long as we always show that our activities are Educational in nature we will be able to pass this test. Once these revisions are done it will go to one of the Partners for final review and submission.

We have been honing in on how to encourage responsible crypto policy while positioning ourselves to be a non-profit organization and establishing a solid framework. We had a meeting with our law firm last month to discuss what activities we are allowed to engage in, the amount of "lobbying" we are allowed to do as opposed to "educating", and the way we can advocate for good blockchain standards without specifically endorsing any candidate or piece of legislation. All of our materials should be reconciled in the next month and we should be able to provide a close-out report.

As an organization we have also been continuing to work with our community partners to offer educational programming. This month we hosted a blockchain attorney with cybersecurity expertise to talk about what happened in the FTX collapse and surrounding regulatory issues. We hope to continue offering these programs through the Champaign Blockchain Meetups and next year's Illinois Blockchain Summit.

We were hoping to complete the Hackathon activities in the end of October but the student groups we had recruited were having trouble with completing their projects. Some of the students told us they needed more time / it was a bad time of the semester, others just stopped responding. It was clear to us that holding a closing workshop would not be very productive and leave most of the students behind. This was a major setback for us.

Our response was to offer an extension for the projects and incorporate the closing of the event into the HackIllinois event which will happen in the Spring. We believe by incorporating these projects as a category in the larger general Hackathon we can get even more students to participate in our closing activities. We can also contribute positively to the campus community and increase awareness of Cardano and Urbit as contributors to the event.

We are coming up to the final days of the Hackathon main build. We've had some teams drop off from communication with us - so we are reconsidering how to engage them for the event. One idea we have is to schedule another Workshop where we can walk everyone through the Urbit and Cardano ecosystems in more detail. We are still hopeful of good reports from other workgroups!

We have been working with our attorneys to finalize our Non-Profit Paperwork that defines what role we will take in education and advocacy. We need to make sure we have the proper balance to devoting most of our time to non-partisan educational issues without taking any sides with specific legislation or candidates, while still encouraging the public to learn about crypto regulations and work with policymakers to find how the industry landscape will be affected. This has taken longer than expected but we are very close to having the right framework that will allow us to be good industry players without crossing any lines that prevents us from being a non-profit.

While most of the efforts of IRI have been focused on the UC4UC Hackathon (our other Catalyst project) we have continued to build on our infrastructure. We now have our Discord server set up and have been inviting our monthly Lunch participants to join. We’ve also successfully launched our monthly Happy Hours and have a good group that meet for this evening gathering and is passionate about promoting good crypto legislation. We met with industry and campus partners about doing another Blockchain Technology presentation geared towards policymakers and it looks like that will have to be in the Spring instead of the Fall - but we are pushing forward to get it scheduled as soon as we can so we can have something on campus.

Hackathon promotion is in full swing - find us on Twitter @UC4UC_Hack. Neal was a guest speaker on the “UIUC Podcast” to talk about his work with the Urbit Foundation and promote the event. Invitations to the kickoff ideation session have been sent out to the Computer Science, Information Sciences, and Disruption & Innovation (College of Business) student newsletters. Adam and Neal have also put up posters around campus. 

In order to reach out beyond the UIUC population for participants and mentors the event is being promoted at the Urbit Assembly (Sept 22-25) in Miami. Neal is promoting it in his panel and Adam worked with The Cardano Solution to provide speakers for a Cardano South Florida Meetup the first night of Urbit Assembly. This event successfully brought together members of the Urbit and Cardano communities to meet each other.

We are getting back on track with development of our website. We have a meeting with student collaborators to set up a research schedule for essential materials we will be sharing

We are making good progress! Our website is being developed this week and we are set to start advertising to students in the next couple weeks now that school is back in session.

We have fallen behind a bit on our outreach as our website relaunch has been pushed back because of development delays. We have also fallen behind on recruiting new team members to spread the word about IRI – which is a combination of not having the website up, having less interest in crypto due to the bear market, and less of a pool of people on campus to work with since the summer months see a significant decline in activity.

That being said, we are still producing educational materials to share with lawmakers, regulators, and the public. Our latest Meetup featured a discussion on the proposed Lummis-Gillibrand Responsible Financial Innovation Act, which will likely serve as the basis for future blockchain regulation. The video archive is available here: https://youtu.be/4YxeaNilkTI

We believe that we can get back on track in the next 30-60 days as our website gets launched and students come back to campus. We will then attract more participants to achieve our outreach goals.

We have made substantial progress planning for the Urbit-Cardano Hackathon. Our event will kick off on September 24-25 in Miami, FL at the Urbit Assembly. Cross-chain teams will be encouraged to form that include both Urbit and Cardano developers as well as participants with other skills such as web development, marketing, or community building experience. There will (of course) also be a virtual venue for team formation.

For the next five weeks, teams will work on their projects giving progress reports to the judges. Then the teams will be invited to present their projects at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign on October 29.

We have booked the second floor of the Siebel Center for Computer Science as the venue of our event. It has a lecture/discussion room, open lounge, and outdoor terrace for us to use. We have also identified the atrium of the Campus Instructional Facility (picture attached) as our overflow venue to book a large keynote.

We have started identifying judges and reaching out to organizations within the Urbit and Cardano ecosystem to provide additional participants.

Meeting between Adam Rusch of IRI and Neal Davis of Urbit Foundation went well. We are making plans of how to run the Hackathon as a hybrid event, where we can match participants from the Urbit and Cardano ecosystems online and get them working together. After the build time is complete, each team will be invited to send representatives to the University of Illinois campus to meet with competition judges and participate in a post-event conference.

The IRI team met with Nathan Takushi to discuss organizational branding and retained him as Brand Manager. Nate has developed a logo (sample provided) and is in the process of updating the website, letterhead, social media imagery, and publishing a complete brand style guide for future reference. Once the re-brand is complete we will proceed with our next phase of publishing materials on what good blockchain policy looks like.

Adam and Matt are leads for this project with Kris giving support. Adam, Matt, and Kris met to discuss ongoing efforts of the organization. Adam attended a Proof-of-Life session and worked with Matt to work with partner Cardano groups. Kris is looking at contract options for required services that can be purchased with grant funds.

Adam and Neal are the two leads for this project. This month we received notice that we were funded for Project Catalyst. Neal is currently in New York City for an Urbit event and will be talking with colleagues about the project. Adam attended a Proof-of-Life session and worked on a list of dates for the event to take place. Adam and Neal made plans to meet next week to talk about event date and venue.