Re: Summer of Protocols

On Monday, April 1st, 2024 at 7:09 AM, Evan Prodromou <evan@prodromou.name> wrote:

> It would be great to see some projects for ActivityPub extensions win these $90,000 grants. Application due April
>
> https://studio.ribbonfarm.com/p/cfa-summer-of-protocols-2024

Absolutely!

I didn't participate last time but did lurk a little at their events and in their Discord. While the organizers and some of the sponsorship grants come from deep in the blockchain-centric decentralization world, the focus (and the goals) are very much to get beyond "everything looks like a nail" and think more generalizably about decentralization and protocol-design.

My sense from talking to them is that they are *particularly* interested in projects that have a mechanism-design/behavioral component, and projects with some kind of formal governance and/or sociological/observational socio-psychological component, so I would discourage people applying only with AP-specific or Fediverse-specific tooling (except maybe bridges/portability/translation-tech?), and encourage people who are looking at governance/federation/moderation tooling and/or user research on the requirements for such and/or adoption strategies, in addition to or instead of tooling for tooling's sake.

People deciding whether or not to invest hours in this app process are encouraged to lurk in their extensive, thematically-organized youtube archive:
https://www.youtube.com/@protocoltownhall/playlists
three of my personal favorites, and relevant to people who participate or lurk on the SocialCG list:
https://www.youtube.com/live/kWPpprIjpwA?si=QeWBaInqAUANqP8E&t=1122

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uw9UiyvYBQ&list=PLIk0EtKZjVlsbcT7WC7Nq-Z5xNz-yUiSW&index=9
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uw9UiyvYBQ&list=PLIk0EtKZjVlsbcT7WC7Nq-Z5xNz-yUiSW&index=10

I'd be happy to help or review apps/work with people on this if they are throwing together an app by, say, Wednesday?

Thanks,
___bumblefudge

---
bumblefudge
janitor [@Chain Agnostic Standards Alliance](https://github.com/chainagnostic/CASA)
contractable via [learningProof UG](https://learningproof.xyz)
mostly berlin-based