Activation and retention of developers in Turkey and India for the Polkadot Ecosystem

Hi all, I am Gulcan. We at Rise In onboard web2 developers into web3 with free-of-charge structured bootcamps, courses, and career and venture-building opportunities. We have 200,000+ web2 developers on our platform, with ~20k of them joining our web3 programs that we carry out in partnership with leading web3 protocols and ecosystems.

This year, we also partnered with Polkadot and have successfully delivered two cohorts of developer bootcamps for Polkadot in Turkey. The total number of students enrolled in the bootcamps exceeded 2,000 and has produced tangible evidence of developers entering and building in the Rust and Substrate Ecosystem. On top of that, we launched our web3 programs in India and already have 8,000 developers in India learning our courses and are interested in doing even more.

However, training is only the beginning of creating a sustainable developer community. The following problems persist:

• Graduating from the bootcamp is only the initial step for building a career. Developers question what they should stay in the Ecosystem, they want to see success stories. Otherwise, they simply leave.

• There is a lack of knowledge and opportunities related to earning and career-building opportunities in the Polkadot Ecosystem. Without an intentional marketing and community-building strategy with a dedicated team behind it, it’s very difficult to collect this information and present meaningful guidelines for developers.

• It’s difficult for developers to stay committed to an Ecosystem without physical communities. Physical events and being present at universities and hackathon environments provide confidence to developers to continue building in the Ecosystem.

That is why, this proposal aims to create a training and then career-building program for developers in Turkey and India. We propose to start with activating developers with an online course and bootcamp program in Turkey and India during 2024. Meanwhile, we’ll also do community events, hackathons, and integrate our students with the existing Polkadot Ecosystem, mainly parachains, to create success stories of developers.

As a result, we believe we can onboard 10,000 developers across Turkey and India in 2024 for the Polkadot Ecosystem through project partnerships, an enhanced bootcamp curriculum, 10 events, and 10 hackathons. We aim to bring in at least 500 developers building projects in the Ecosystem alongside 2,500+ new wallet addresses.

The full proposal is here.

Since this proposal involves the Polkadot Ecosystem, we’d appreciate your feedback on how we can turn it into reality. If we approach developer activation and retention from a professional point of view with its own dedicated effort, we can see a dedicated community in two of the largest web3 talent countries in the world, Turkey and India!