Abena Asante - Culture-Sensitive Hackathons for Empowering African Youth with Ethereum

Transcript

thank you very much um welcome everybody to my presentation um I'm happy to share a topic a research topic which have just started and also a project which is close to my heart as the title say that um I'm analyzing how to design hackaton which have the best effective impact on each cities here you see the image of sorry um hackaton that I attended two weeks ago it was e Global in London I think it's something that you come across like people sitting together London Bridge here's another image of a hackaton which I did last year e arra

hackaton in Ghana where you see people together on the left side working over a project another image where people are posing in front of um of one of the sponsors and Below you see images of cities on the on the left side arra and right side Legos I just want to showcase on this image the similarities as well as the differences of um hecaton in various cities the question is should all hecaton be the same and what I mean by the same is the same format same Communication channel same time aspect everything I personally think

no and the observation comes from differences that I have observed as um as a hackaton participant myself as well as organizing hackaton for example time perception I've realized that in Ghana Sundays is reserved for family or attending your community events so if you organize anything that stops on a Sunday for example people will not show up when I attend hackaton in London it starts on Friday evening ends on Sunday when for example here the presentation I'm doing is on Saturday if I had opportunity to talk on a Sunday I think I would still take on the opportunities because Sunday here it's not very valued as attend spending time with your family

or attending the church Communication channel is huge difference on the left side you see a billboard we realized that when we were advertising it on our social media people did not really grasp whether this is fake or or scam or really happening but the moment we uploaded a bill billboard in the middle of the city that's what we CAU people attention and they they associate this event event as something that is legitimate that is happening so the communication channel was a huge important aspect same as uh broadcasting via radio I mean in Switzerland here radio I think is not very popular the the the main source of communication but in Ghana radio is

everything so being aware that Communication channel you choose is important as well as collaboration style it's highly collectivistic in the um Society so we have not come across anyone who's came to hack as a solo hacker when I go to a hacker in Lisbon London Paris I've come across many people who are just hacking solo for them you come to the venue you register play around you you you've you you just code whatever your like heart deze it's it also observed that it's a more individualistic Society so we cat like group formation and team formation s

session was a very important aspect people wanted to feel the need that have a group when you form a group that's when you come together so the group aspect collaboration aspect was very very important these are the four differences that we came across the next aspect I want to talk about the demographics I mean the reason why I'm doing this study is because this demographic speaks volume when you see that 70 like 1.4 billion of the population is based in Africa and 75% of them are below 35 years it's a huge population a huge youth population compared to Switzerland where 25% of the population is 65 years plus so I think

we're talking about it's complete opposite and the median age is 19 years I mean I think I think these numbers indicate that the future of Labor Force future of maybe Innovation will come from this continent because people are just the way they interact with technology not only etherum but also mobile application Etc it's just completely different so you need to design events or application which is culture sensitive taking all these as um factors into consideration why am I doing this research one aspect was definitely for my personal interest

in attending hackaton but as well as organizing I realized that there's a differences and I'm a highly in like curious person that whenever I come across findings or aspects I always want to figure out is this something happened by coincidence is there any cality is there any evidence is there any um um correlation behind it and for this for to answer these questions I decided to do a scientific research to beon up my observation to also present findings for future people to to use it how to design hackathon um I think the specific research questions I want to answer is how to design hackaton

that they have um the biggest um effect on the African youth as well as um future like stakeholders protocols Etc who want to participate what kind of metrics what kind of aspect they need to consider in order to enter the market because many people want to enter the African Market but many people just don't know how to enter and providing um findings of This research will help them to enter the market in the best effective way personal information personal interest is one aspect but then I ask myself is my research even scientifically important does it add any value to it I think I can answer this by yes by the demographics we have a huge

youth uh contribution uh population which will contribute to the overall economic growth of African countries hackaton are a very appealing entry point because you don't only learn about the technology itself but you also learn about the community how to build a protocol and I think the current the way Society is run I think the economy like the government is not able to provide the the Surplus or the demand of um of of of labor force that cannot meet why not having different resources or different tools to C to the need because I mean as you said like 75% is 35 years plus the government is not able to create jobs to

cater to the needs so if you can use technology blockchain ethereum Etc to cater to the needs I mean that would be a huge Plus for the overall economic growth and yes I mean the definitely the the goal that the objective of the research is to to have findings on how to um design culture sensitive hecaton as a recap this is the objectives that I want to the questions I want to answer how to design and also the next step is to explain how Heaton's components from the hacker manual the resources event kickoff team formation Etc needs to be designed or differ across cultures because again because

there's no one size fits all even though there's ethereum hackaton but the components um differ vastly from from um Ghana to um to like um Zurich and the reason why I'm focusing more on the a West African context is because I'm originally from Ghana so have connection to it Ghana and Nigeria are similar because they are both um English speaking countries so the findings that I have from this from Ghana can be applied to Nigerian context I am not going to analyze French speaking countries because they are different I would say soci economic background so it there's no one side fits all and I focus more on the West Africa context maybe

the the the finance can be applied to the east African context as well but I just want to emphasize that Africa is huge and there's also not one size fits all for the African countries the methodology that I'm going to Supply is the first step is I think the images is not okay we are going to have like a online survey where we're going to send out the questionnaire to um the participant it's divided in three sections first we want to have an impact um insights before the hackaton what was the motivation attending the hackaton intrinsic as well as extrinsic factors we want to know do they have any pre hackaton experience online or in person

the second section contains everything about during the hackaton how did they experience a collaboration within the team how was the atmosphere within the venue how were the learning material mentors resources everything this the second the third aspect is um after the heckum what what was the outcome did they meet the expectation were they able to form meaningful relationship that will maybe lead them to have like internship in a we protocol because hackaton is not only about the tech applying your Tech skills it's also about creating opportunity for people to come learn connect and also take it from there the second aspect um we're going

to do is like we're going to have interviews scheduled with various participants because online survey it does not open up enough information to extract the nuances and sometimes people share more information when you have an interview with them we have questioners prepared where we're going to have like a semi structure that means we not going to give out the questions to the participant we just keep them as a guidelines we ask various participants but also the mentors the um the sponsors what was the overall impression the third step that we're going to do is um observation observation is mainly there because some people do not feel comfortable when they have to fill out a

survey or interview but you can get a lot of information by observing just we will be in the room we will just take fi notes observe how we have we as Observer experience the whole um setting from registration the hackaton V announcement Etc so by having these three approaches we will have like a holistic approach of the whole event different time different venue different um location that will give us the best possible outcome of um get inside how the Heaton should be designed the expected outcome that we expect from this um from this event from

this research is definitely how to design the hackaton because we believe that it's a huge potential um it's so an entry point and we emphasize on how it needs to be well designed what we what we mean by welld designed is taking all this temporal time um um cultural aspect into consideration in order to create hauton um dedicated to the need of the ghanian youth for the Nigerian youth um yes and the next step is definitely most hackathons are only based on their Western context and by having a western context you also only address the Western challenges and I think ethum is

like has the slogan of infinite Garden there's no oneid fits all and if you take the African youth uh cont into consideration we might also come up with different solutions on how to address uh etherum challenges the other aspect is we will definitely get the better insights on each region technical um techco um ecosystem what is unique there what are the challenges what works well how can we emphas how can we design um hackaton so that it cater to the regional needs and then the scientific contribution

that is can be summarized in the three different um aspect um it IT addresses The Innovation Theory um theory of Youth Empowerment in the African context as well as um designing hackaton which are accessible inclusive and also um um takes that timing consideration um into um time that temporal aspect into consideration I think but while addressing these three points we will definitely have a scientific contribution which is important and which legitimate um the research objective um okay um I have a question

to the audience what this is um since I've already only started this research what exactly are you most interested to get from this um research I mean I still have time to attend your questions so I want to know what are you interested and why are you interested what do you expect from the outcome yeah yes uh ah okay thank you so I must attend events in

Europe so the thing that I like the most is about how we can build applications that are actually going to be adopted and implemented so not just an application that lives for an aaton but something that will go on and that in three years it will become the sponsor of the aaton so how how do you think that we can make that happen sorry I didn't hear you at all from acoustic point of view sorry can you um can you rephrase your question how can we make the projects that come out of an aaton actually be implemented and go mainstream so your question was how can

you implement the outcome or how can we make the products the products the products I don't the winners of the hackaton uh how can you okay so if I understand you correctly how can you implement the projects which come out from a hackaton for future Edition or for and make them go mainstream okay um that's an interesting question um um how should I answer it um I mean this is something that I personally have observed it's it requires a lot of um education

but as well as like more mentorship once the project has been um I mean this what i' observed last year that the project that came out are really high quality very very good very Innovative but I think there needs to be like a accelerator program like apprenticeship program whatsoever that you have like more like um like a path a step by step how people can like build a prototype regular checkin I think it's a new phenomenon but it also requires more education more Hands-On um mentorship in order for to have like it come out like a a fully fledged like I don't know next

African um Unis swap de for example that's my personal advice that you need more mentorship and education but it also requires that you need to take time to come in person meet people there because good having good a personal relationship is important via Zoom does not do justice so maybe does it answer your question yes thank you okay I have a question so uh lot of the conference organizers or Heaton organizers are essentially coming from the global community and lot of times like coming back to their Hometown home country basically setting up these eatons that they experience somewhere else it's like my story it's your story

uh uh as well and I wonder you know crypto crypto has this label of like being risky maybe like associated with gambling and like a lot of people basically don't consider uh what we what we do legitimate enough and uh therefore it may be hard to kind of get you know the the proper legitimacy locally uh I wonder what's your EXP experience with working with like institutions or groups that U may not be within crypto uh but may be super helpful to kind of bridge the gap that could uh you know make sure that the event that you're hosting or anyone is hosting is is considered like legit and considered as like a um like a

local local event with this Global Connection rather than you know a bunch of Outsiders trying to just sell you their stuff yeah very interesting question I was um came across these challenges but my team and I what we did we did like a campus tour we did like ether Crown campus we went to various universities these are main target audience and also web two communities and we basically like did a road show explain what can people expect we also work with local um developer community so to because people still have the concept of crypto ES C and I think it's ours it requires a lot of community work to not only like from

organization aspect organizing the heon but also doing the whole educational and Community work and I think my advice is work like two-way with local universities is the best um entry point but also establish organizations like um we work like with UNF in Ghana we work with um Local web um web two communities also we three communities already established because when you do this with them people can trust because they have already um work their reputation there so something that is new component from the outside but also something that is well known if you can combine these two aspect I think then you yeah then you'll be very

successful this was I mean for our case um yeah we were successful in this aspect thank you there's more questions yes so first of all I just want to answer your question from before um so that you get something back as well um and I understand your question was uh why is it that we would be interested in it or or what do you think like the general um audience here might be looking for in your research as well um now I I come from a background where we do a lot of capacity development capacity building um bridging between the global North and the global South and I very very often see exactly that problem arising that we take mechanisms

that potentially work in our world and we bring it to another world and it doesn't work and it leads to exactly the the point raised before as well that things are being discussed that are very good that lead to nothing ultimately because the ecosystem is different um and yeah I mean the the longterm the sustainability strategy of it is is not is not there it's not given um I also find that it very often excludes people so I would be very interested to see from your research to what extent you might also um be able to think about the um the limiting factors that often arise as well in terms of even connectivity and and the ability of people to join um I don't know the the gender gap and all of these uh other elements that typically are more an issue in the

global uh Global North uh sorry Global South um and if I may also add a question from my side I was just wondering um in terms of the scope of your study so you talking about heathens and the like obviously looking at the dichotomy or potentially nonomy between the global South and the global north um I was just wondering to what extent can your study or your research also be extended to workshops in general I mean why is hackathon such a particular context and then it feels on top of it maybe this is for the purpose of today as well that it very much talks about ethereum and and obviously blockchain is that even a more differentiated angle to it or would you consider your work to

generally at at least cover hackathons if not generally workshops as a whole H interesting point let me um start the first one the work um workshops I think the reason why I focused on hackathons was mainly because also personal interest I attended a lot of hackaton myself myself so I tended from um in India as bangaluru bota Paris New York Etc but that's why I maybe I focus on the hackathon my the finance can also be applied to workshops I'm not very sure about that aspect um I

think I think um if I don't really have enough data to um to my how should I say as far as I know there have only been three hackaton organized on the African continent ethereum the first one was 2019 in Cape Town the second one was in uh 2022 in Nairobi and the third one I organized last in arar so I think that I don't really have a lot of examples or data and that two hackaton what to the best of my knowledge there have not been any hackaton even in web to like even though we have like Google Twitter Rush unit

have they all incorporate in Ghana but they have not done this so far so I just don't know why or like it's just not enough data Maybe here or like initiatives the other aspect um I'm not sure whether the findings can be applicable for workshops to be honest because work workshops that just a different nature like what what do you mean like workshops where people need to code something or workshops where people are just more mainly consuming like information like how interactive is it because we heon is unique collabora a collaborative one but I think when it just come to

collaborative things I think you can um the findings can be generalized for for any collaborative education events I would say because the framework is the same it's all about coming together learn and also collaboration our course whether it's one day or three days or two weeks uh or two weeks or two hours it's all about collaboration I think from that from scientific aspect you you can transfer you can generalize it definitely and the communication channel would also be the same whether it's one day or two days so in that aspect I think I cannot confirm but I

think you you can definitely generalize but yeah does it answer your question yeah uh we are on time so thank you so much again please one more round of applause um okay so um no I just okay if you want I have my LinkedIn um if you want to sorry um what I I want to show oops here it's not working um yes s this the heck I'm doing next uh this August again the second edition if anyone wants to attend and I have my LinkedIn here so we can stay in touch

and um I'm more than happy to answer your questions thank you for coming