Please describe your proposed solution.

This convention will be hosted completely online. Project creators will be able to showcase their products in a booth and attendees will have a customizable avatar that they can use to explore.

The most time consuming part of creating a digital world is creating the content. In order to create a scalable and inclusive convention, we would need to create tools that allow project creators to manage their own section. If it is done this way, the Future Fest team will not need to build each individual project booth. The project creators would be able to use the tools to upload and compose their areas to be custom tailored for their brand.

The convention center will be broken up into a giant grid. Booths will have a certain size depending on the tier. To ensure that Cardano projects can be represented, all tiers will be free. We will not be charging any of the Cardano projects participating to showcase and manage a booth. In order to drive more attention to this event, we will host polls to assign tiers based on how active projects' communities are. The more active a community, the larger space they will have at the convention.

We have chat and livestream features implemented that allow for panel discussions to take place during the convention. Realtime chat will allow speakers to react and respond if they choose to. Topics for discussion will be left for the community and organizers are able to schedule them whenever they want.

Please describe how your proposed solution will address the Challenge that you have submitted it in.

This solution will hopefully drive adoption of Cardano by showcasing the projects that are being built on its ecosystem. Being able to meet and interact with members from the community will hopefully increase the bonds and relationships with the people in it.

What are the main risks that could prevent you from delivering the project successfully and please explain how you will mitigate each risk?

The biggest risk is if a lot of Cardano projects are not interested in this. A major part of what makes a convention work is having enough communities represented to make it interesting for attendees to explore. If we only have a handful of Cardano projects participating, users would run out of content fast. Some ways to get more projects interested in doing this include: having zero costs for projects to host and manage a booth, include light competition between communities for perks for the event, and adding gamification that would incentivize people to participate.

Please provide a detailed plan, including timeline and key milestones for delivering your proposal.

Each sprint will run for two weeks. We aim to complete this proposal in eight sprints. Each bullet point represents the competition of a major feature. There will also be a period after sprint #6 where we will focus on working with the project participants and helping them get set up.

Responsible Parties:

Future Fest [FF]

DevBuddy [DB]

Sprint #1:

• UI/UX designs [FF]
• Convention layout design [FF]
• Backend architecture [FF]

Sprint #2:

• Booth manager accounts [FF]

Sprint #3:

• Initial project outreach [FF]
• Convention site frontend [FF]

Sprint #4:

• Asset upload [FF]
• Panel stream management [FF]

Sprint #5:

• Enhanced chat features [FF]
• Booth management [FF] / [DB]

Sprint #6:

• Convention environment [FF] / [DB]

Sprint #7:

• Event testing [FF] / [DB]

Sprint #8:

• Event showcase [FF] / [DB]

Estimated event showcase: March 6-12, 2023

Please provide a detailed budget breakdown.

Development: $66,200

• UI/UX designs: $7,200 = rate of $40/hour x 180 hours
• Frontend development: $15,000 = rate of $50/hour x 300 hours
• Backend development: $20,000 = rate of $50/hour x 400 hours
• Unity development: $24,000 = rate of $40/hour x 600 hours

Art: $10,000

• 3D models
• Environment
• Animation

Infrastructure: $26,000

• Cloud hosting: $20,000 = allows for hundreds of cloud computer units to be available for cloud game streaming during the course of the week
• Video streaming: $5,000 = ingest servers and video output
• Content delivery network (CDN): $1000 = loading assets at scale

Marketing: $20,000

• Content creation
• Project onboarding
• Project outreach
• Campaign

Total Budget: $122,200

Please provide details of the people who will work on the project.

Steven Yang

Steven comes from a software development background and has worked at Fortune 500 media companies. He has led several technical teams in creating projects in emerging technologies.

[Responsibility: Backend development]

Kevin Mowers

Kevin has virtual reality experience, specializing in interactive user immersion and system design. His industry work ranges from media to e-commerce.

[Responsibility: Unity development]

Matthew Sears

Matthew has led product development for multiple creative platforms. He has extensive experience in ideation, storytelling, design, development and the implementation of virtual experiences.

[Responsibility: UI/UX development]

Pablo Canales

Pablo has experience in business affairs, having worked with TV studios and major music labels. He holds a graduate degree in music industry administration and is an NFT evangelist.

[Responsibility: Marketing / onboarding]

Jimmy Sambuo

Jimmy has spent the last decade building and maintaining systems for Fortune 500 companies. He has experience in developing various systems, including web, mobile, cloud and gaming systems.

[Responsibility: Frontend / backend development]

Wyatt Thornbury / DevBuddy

Wyatt has an extensive background in systems and virtual reality game development.

[Responsibility: Unity development]

If you are funded, will you return to Catalyst in a later round for further funding? Please explain why / why not.

If this proposal is successful and receives good reception, we may propose a virtual convention for the next year.

Please describe what you will measure to track your project's progress, and how will you measure these?

During the course of the convention, we will track users attended, number of chat messages and total time spent with voice chat. The reason we want to track these KPIs is because we want to see if people are actually socializing. We ultimately want to create a place where people can connect, so measuring usage of our communication tools is vital.

What does success for this project look like?

The hope is that after this conference, more people would enjoy this format for gatherings. Virtual events certainly can't replace in-person events, but we believe that elements such as social connections and shared experiences could be replicated. With the convenience of attending and the limitless possibilities of creating digital environments, this style of event could become its own industry.

Another success scenario is if we find that a good number of people outside of the Cardano community discovers projects they're interested in at the convention. If we see a lot of other communities attend this event, it provides more awareness for what is going on in the Cardano ecosystem.

Please provide information on whether this proposal is a continuation of a previously funded project in Catalyst or an entirely new one.

No