A couple of months ago I decided to signup for the 30DaysOfWeb3 curriculum by WomenBuildWeb3 to learn a bit more about web3 development. By the end of the course, I was quite excited about the achievement of building a functioning app, and I was ready to learn more jumping into my first web3 hackathon*: ETHOnline 2022.
Web3 Community
Fast forward to September and I find myself overwhelmed by the number of things I wanted to learn in web3.
When the ETHOnline 2022 link popped up in the WBW3 Launchpad chat I was extremely curious about it and checked it out immediately. As I was going through the application though I started to feel like I didn’t have what it took to participate. What if my technical skills were not enough? What if I don’t have a team/project to start with? The hackathon seemed highly competitive with all those sponsors and the month-long commitment.
As with everything in life, it’s common to feel unsure, unfit and unprepared when you’re learning something new. Even if you're working in IT for the past fifteen years...
That's why having a community around you, IRL or virtually can be a turning point when deciding where to invest your energies. I shared my fears with the group on Discord and immediately got a few replies from the community, with many sharing their experiences from previous hackathons. Their motivation and support were all I needed to hear at that moment to make my decision. I felt empowered by the words of all the other devs and enthusiasts learning with me, and I signed up.
Web3 Skills
Next thing I know it’s the first day of the hackathon! And I am browsing around all the Discord channels, catching up with the live streaming and wrapping myself around where to start.
ETHOnline is a month-long hackathon where you can participate as a team or solo, and it has a full agenda of workshops and events by several sponsors. I started to read the messages from people who were looking for a team and decided to also draft a couple of sentences about myself. Who am I? What do I do? What I can bring to the team?
In a few hours, I had several chats open discussing with people around the world about the possibility of joining their teams and projects. Again I was overwhelmed, and a bit frustrated as some interactions seemed to turn into job interviews. That was not what I was looking for, plus it felt a bit intimidating. Back to square one, I focused on my skills and what I enjoy doing. Stuck to that I narrowed my search and eventually found the perfect match, or better, it found me.
Interplanetary Fonts team was already mostly formed when I got a message from Lalo. Together with JP and Miguel, they were looking for a product manager, and an extra hand on dev. The plan? Building a platform for font creators. I've never heard anything like that in web3... So of course I said YES! Let's do this!
Although I would have wanted to code more I realized how important was also to put into practice my communication and presentation skills for the success of the project, and how much I did love to take care of this part.
After we submitted the demo video at the end of the month, I was happily exhausted. We worked so hard on this idea we knew that no matter what we wanted to continue building it together.
The WBW3 community was right, I did learn a ton of new things just participating, engaging with the workshops, troubleshooting bugs with the team and working together with developers from all over the world with the same passion 🛠
What’s next
And then the email came. One day after the submission, we received the best news we didn't even dare to hope for: we were selected to present our project as one of the 14 Finalists of ETHOnline 2022!!! ...out of 1780 hackers and 360 projects submitted 😱
What could be next? Well, this time I don't have a doubt. I reached out to other devs in the WBW3 community and onboarded a couple more team members. I feel strongly about the team and I realized that the overwhelming feeling about web3 could be converted into a new learning opportunity everywhere I looked.
Keeping the momentum going I signed us up for the BUIDL Accelerator by Encode Club and WomenBuildWeb3 hoping to get a chance to continue working on our project 🤞
Let's go🚀🚀🚀
Learn more about our development roadmap: https://interplanetaryfonts.notion.site/BUIDL-Accelerator-by-Encode-Club-x-WBW3-156c4cf14414428e9aaa6ec82b621b77
and join us on Discord: https://discord.gg/rv9pxS8V3Y
*To be honest my first web3 hackathon was ETHPrague 2022 in June 🫡 but at that time I participated as an observer, and "only" listened to many inspiring talks and workshops.