Launched in an online video kickoff meeting, the Apollo Hackathon gently lifted off. MCing the proceeding was Vivek, COO of Gitcoin, who told us:
“Apollo aims to build a give-first community of highly talented individuals who are unusually likely to succeed in building Web 3.”
Wow. Nice to be here. It’s already clear that there are a lot of talented people present.
There’s a Learn Track and a Build Track. We’ll try to do both. We know we have a long learning curve with all the new infrastructure. That was readily apparent in our HackFS experience. But we also want to get code driving a visible user interface so ClimateDataPool can be seen. Now it’s just standalone scripts on a command line.
But first we need to acclimate and engage this community. Juan Benet, the founder of Protocol Labs which is steering the Filecoin development, is a visionary. He gave an inspiring talk, and stated:
“Filecoin’s mission is to create a decentralized, efficient, and robust foundation for humanity’s information.”
So – that’s an ambitious goal. But these collaborative, supportive environments full of dedicated developers are exactly where such accomplishments take form.
Juan said, “Getting to know other people is the big benefit of this program”. That was also the directive from the kickoff: get to know the people here. Fine by us, as we were looking to replace our backend teammate who unfortunately had to bail.
Community tools are Airmeet for conferencing, circle.so for info, and Slack for chat. We spent a lot of time connecting with devs who indicated they were looking to join a team, as well as interacting with groups doing related projects. When video sessions are scheduled there’s always time to sit and babble on virtual tables in Airmeet. We found this to be the most effective networking. Verbal communication is an order of magnitude more personable than text messaging.
Due to our involvement in HackFS we got in early and were invited to a Fireside event before the kickoff that was actually the wrap of the previous cohort. Entitled “The Gift + Vitalik’s View”, the session focused on a fundamental aspect of hacker and cypherpunk culture: gift-giving. It’s an ancient custom, occurring throughout our common history. In digital communities gifts often take the form of encoded knowledge.
Watching Vitalik ruminate and interact with Vivek, Sachin, and other guests, we realized that the collaboration goes far beyond incubating some projects or companies. They’re collectively building a fostering economy. One which pays it forward.
Now that’s something we’ll be happy to sustain. 👍