Sustain and Maintain Gimbalabs

Solution

Please describe your proposed solution

Gimbalabs was founded in 2021 as a space to learn Cardano development and get involved in live projects. In the course of three years, this space evolved into a virtual co-habitat that aims to, “provide open, replicable safe spaces to learn, to explore, and to empower individuals and organizations anywhere so that we can solve meaningful problems.”

Gimbalabs in general is solving the problem of maintaining, sustaining, and replicating spaces to learn, collaborate, and build on Cardano.

Various sub-spaces, projects, organizations, and project-based learning (pbl) courses have sprung from Gimbalabs. Below is a comprehensive list of all the off-spring endeavors.

Sub-spaces:

Plutus PBL Live Coding
Mesh PBL Live Coding
Cardano Go PBL Live Coding
Gimbalabs Playground (an open space to share ideas, present projects, get feedback, etc. with the Cardano community)
Gimbalabs Open Spaces (a co-creation and governance space for Gimbalabs open for anyone to join)
Gimbalabs Hong Kong (local community networking and learning space powered by SIDAN Lab)

Project Based Learning Courses:

Plutus PBL (PPBL 2024 is live! <https://plutuspbl.io/blog>)
Mesh PBL
Cardano Go PBL
More courses like Aiken PBL, Marlow PBL, etc. are also in the process of being created

Projects / Infrastructure:

Dandelion (pre-built images for quick deployment of core Cardano infrastructure)
Gimbalabs Stakepool (Ticker: GMBL)
Andamio (a decentralized Leraninga nd Contribution management system built on Cardano)

Gimbalabs is currently using Sociocracy 3.0 (<https://sociocracy30.org/>) as a framework for everyday collaborations and consent.

Impact

Please define the positive impact your project will have on the wider Cardano community

Gimbalab’s impact track record through the years:

Gimbalabs started with this successful Fund2 Proposal: <https://gimbalabs.com/fund2.pdf> (and scored the leading vote tally in Fund1 - before there was real funding)
Has delivered 4 iterations of Plutus PBL Course, with 5th iteration, Plutus PBL 2024, launching now, in May 2024
Host of weekly Playground sessions for 3+ years
Host of twice-weekly (and now more!) Live Coding sessions for 2+ years
Gimbalabs YouTube is a helpful archive:
Some new PBL courses (coming soon): Mesh PBL, Aiken PBL, etc.

How will we measure the impact?

Here are some straightforward metrics to track Gimbalab’s success:

Number of PBLs maintained and upgraded
Number of new PBLs added
Number of sub-spaces maintained
Number of new sub-spaces created
Number of services/infrastructure maintained and added
Number of students that started a course
Number of students that completed a course

All outputs, including the student stats and the links to courses, GitHub repos, governance open space, live coding sessions, etc. will be shared publicly and in the milestones.

<https://www.youtube.com/c/gimbalabs>

Capability & Feasibility

What is your capability to deliver your project with high levels of trust and accountability? How do you intend to validate if your approach is feasible?

At Gimbalabs, we have built one of the best technical learning technologies in the Cardano ecosystem, with the ability to extract the fundamentals of complex topics (protocols, tooling, infrastructure, design patterns, etc) and package them into skills. That is our know-how.

Trust and accountability:

Talented developers, today founders of renowned Cardano startups (JPG store, MeshJS, Cardano Name Service (CNS), Gods of Blocks, Loxe inc, Ekival, others), trusted us to take their first steps in the ecosystem: to know everything they needed to know, without restrictions, and from there, build their own path. We did not let them down.
Gimbalabs is an infrastructure builder: Dandelion, Andamio.
Gimbalabs is consulting: Joey's Hot Sauce, challenge "Spend ADA in your local community!", OneUpOneDown, Oxford University, Handshake, Blink Labs, CNS, MeshJS, SingularityNET, and others.

Approach validation:

Gimbalabs started with this successful Fund2 Proposal: <https://gimbalabs.com/fund2.pdf> (and scored the leading vote tally in Fund1 - before there was real funding)
Has delivered 4 iterations of Plutus PBL Course, with 5th iteration, Plutus PBL 2024, launching now, in May 2024
Host of weekly Playground sessions for 3+ years
Host of twice-weekly (and now more!) Live Coding sessions for 2+ years
Gimbalabs YouTube is a helpful archive:

Feasibility of implementation:

Talents: Gimbalabs consists of a group of educators and diverse professionals. The budget would be easily justified by the collective professional hours contributed to deliver one of the best courses on the Cardano ecosystem we strive to be.
Approach: With the 4+ iterations of Plutus PBL Course, Gimbalabs is proven the expert of delivering such education materials.
Platform: Gimbalabs founds Andamio, which is a highly effective education platform built on Cardano, natively as the best platform of delivering Cardano education materials.
Know-how: Gimbalabs gathers a group of expert software engineer with extremely deep knowledge in the discipline of operation.

Project Milestones

What are the key milestones you need to achieve in order to complete your project successfully?

Milestone 1: Milestone 1: Proposal onboarding and planning (1 Month)

Objective: Establish a solid foundation for the project by setting up the necessary responsibilities, infrastructure, and defining project management practices.

Activities:

Set up responsibilities for current community activities such as open spaces.
Create a list of all infrastructure needed for coordination, communication, and governance
Establish project management tools and practices
Organizing the current Notion space for all activities and all ongoing cost items (e.g. subscriptions)