Written by Marta Carslake, Head of Admissions, Polkadot Blockchain Academy
On a beautiful, sunny Sunday in early July 2022, I made my way through the pretty streets of Cambridge, excited but nervous. I had recently joined the Polkadot Blockchain Academy — a tiny team comprised of Pauline, the Head of Academy and Alexandra, Communications and Community Manager, as well as Tim who we ‘borrowed’ from Parity’s Recruitment Team and Dan who helped us with project management on a part-time basis. With the support of the amazing faculty, we had set out to do something audacious — to produce a 5 week, in-person blockchain program. Nothing like this existed in the world, and we had only 2 months to put it all together; secure a venue, create a curriculum, bring together faculty, and my area of expertise, recruit a cohort of students. To say it was a challenge is an understatement, but who needs sleep, right?
Despite the challenges (a short timeline, a curriculum in development, no prior record cite and several bouts of Covid), we had made it to the day that the students were due to arrive, and as I walked towards Corpus Christi College I couldn’t help but ask myself — would anyone turn up??
I needn’t have worried. As soon as I entered the spectacular setting of the college, I was informed by the porter on duty that two keen beans had already checked in. We had at least two students! I could breathe a little easier.
In the end, almost every single person we had offered a place had arrived more or less unharmed (two incidents of lost luggage and one incident of going to Corpus Christi, Oxford rather than Cambridge aside). Some had travelled from the other side of the world to take a risk on an untested course, who no one knew anything about. Several thought it was a scam (You’re paying for my accommodation? You’re feeding me?? For five weeks??? And Gavin Wood will teach me about blockchain???? Sounds too good to be true…) but took a leap of faith and jumped on a plane, relieved on arrival to meet the PBA team and discover we really existed.
What followed was a slightly wild, very fun, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants adventure. There were breakfasts in Hogwartsesque dining rooms, late night impromptu gigs in the Junior Common Room, punting on the Cam, drinks and laughter in riverside pubs, and the hottest temperatures Cambridge experienced in recorded history (no such thing as air-con in the 14th century). After 5 weeks, 55 students completed the program and returned home to catch up on their sleep, having received a remarkable blockchain education and made lifelong friends.
For a lot of our students though this was just the beginning of their Polkadot journey, as they continued to learn, joined ecosystems teams and started their own projects. I am incredibly proud to say that many are still there, making important contributions to the ecosystem, and some even coming back to the PBA as lecturers. I’ll never forget those balmy weeks in Cambridge and the first cohort of students will always hold a special place in my heart.
Meanwhile, after a week or two of well-deserved sleep, the PBA team was restless. We needed a new challenge. Cambridge had been a success and the world awaited. We settled on Buenos Aires in Argentina, a country at the forefront of blockchain innovation, where we partnered with the University of Buenos Aires. For a team mostly based in Europe, it presented us with a new set of challenges and while we gave ourselves a little longer this time by allowing four months to prepare, it was still ambitious. We didn’t want to grow complacent!
With photos and videos to prove we are a real programme, a full curriculum, and a stack of testimonials from former students, now alumni, recruiting students got much easier. We increased the cohort to 75, introduced a Rust entrance exam and set about recruiting a cohort. Meanwhile the curriculum was refined and the venue secured.
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When applications opened, the local community did not disappoint, and a large proportion of the students were made up of local devs eager to learn about blockchain. The campus was situated in the prestigious Buenos Aires University Faculty of Law building, a beautiful setting for serious learning. But as always, fun was also on the curriculum as our students experienced Buenos Aires via PBA side events and self organised excursions.
After 5 busy weeks, our Alumni community grew to over 100 devs and the impact they were making was starting to be felt in the ecosystem. From joining Polkadot companies and teams to working on their own projects, they were using the education they received at PBA to play an active role in Polkadot.
Not long after the Buenos Aires cohort finished, Erin joined the team to look after operations and student experience and the timing couldn’t be better as our attention turned to North America and we settled on Berkeley, California for our next location. Here the PBA partnered with RDI, a leading blockchain research institution, and we based ourselves at the beautiful University of California, Berkeley campus. While the cohort size remained the same as PBA2, we opened our doors to 18 entrepreneurs with big ideas and an interest in Web3 and blockchain.
Our newly formed Founders Track brought a new dimension to our curriculum and it was fascinating to see the breadth and scope of projects our students brought to the PBA. Some of our entrepreneurs were just starting out, while others had long-running projects they wanted to migrate to Web 3 and Polkadot. Working with them was an education for the PBA team as much as it was for them, and it’s wonderful to see many of them still active and productive in the ecosystem.
Having such a wide range of experiences and backgrounds really enriched the whole cohort. We were a stone’s throw away from Silicon Valley and all our students really embraced the entrepreneurial spirit in the air and made the most of their time at the PBA. The range of self-organised extra-curricular clubs and activities they formed remains unbeaten. We had a chess club, a hiking group, bouldering, running, trips to San Francisco and excursions to see the redwood forests. I never thought I would find myself watching an am dram performance of E. M. Forster’s A Room With A View at an open air theatre surrounded by redwoods on a work trip, but that’s the beauty of the PBA, and the Berkeley cohort in particular.
After Berkeley, it was time to look east. Hong Kong and Singapore beckoned and once again, the PBA team was ambitious in its goals, not just for our academic partners, where we teamed up with prestigious local institutions (Poly U in Hong Kong and NUS in Singapore) renowned for leading the way in blockchain research and education. We also increased the cohort size to 90 and both waves took place in the first 6 months of the year. Wave 5 in Hong Kong included a packed program for our Founders Track students, and whilst for wave 6 in Singapore we went back to our roots of focusing on developers, albeit with an extra-curricular Pitch and Mentor programme, we also invited 50 students to join the course remotely.
Both of these locations presented us with challenges, some new (terrifying lifts in Hong Kong and sudden, apocalyptic thunderstorms in Singapore) and some as old as the hills (jetlag and ever present air-conditioning grumbles), but our students brought their A game once again and we spent 5 wonderful weeks working together and learning from one another.
Our team continued to grow and we welcome new members, Alicia (Events Specialist) and Nikos (Lead Engineer and Curriculum producer).
The Singapore edition was particularly bittersweet for the PBA team as we waved goodbye to the original, 5 week format, and at the same time offered our students a glimpse into the future in the shape of the Remote Track. In all, we welcomed a record 140 students both in-person and virtually as we tested out delivering our curriculum online rather than in a classroom. We learned many lessons but were delighted to discover that our remote students were just as active in the virtual classroom as our onsite ones, and both are now active and engaged members of the Alumni community.
And that brings us to the present day. We have spent the last 6 months crafting our first online program, PBA-X, and updating the in-person curriculum to reflect the developments in the Polkadot ecosystem. The future looks exciting for the Polkadot Blockchain Academy, and I feel incredibly privileged to be on board such a fun and inspiring journey.
Find out more about the Academy: https://polkadot.academy/