We bring in the month with the latest project updates and grant reports from awardees, community posts, upcoming community events and get to know the new GftW Community Ambassador!
Project Updates
GftW awardees Hostbeak Kreators created a campaign that aimed to educate and empower content creators in Africa and recently announces the winners.
Hello everyone,
We are proud to inform you that the finalists for the HostBeak Kreators programme have been announced!
One thing we never anticipated was how long the selection process would take.We had a hard time selecting from the amazing entries we got but some simply stood out.
See the winners: kreators.hostbeak.com/winners
Lawil for project Snake Nation shares details on the Women in Tech Hackathon
Woman in Tech Hackathon
Our previous hackathon was the Woman in Tech Hackathon to tackle Gender Based Violence Snake Nation partnered with CPUT establish Women in Innovation and Business(WIB) Society, a university programme designed for correcting all the barriers to diversity by working with diverse partners, judges, mentors, and trainers; expanding recruitment networks to diversify the pipeline; designing curriculum intentionally tailored to more diverse needs.The Assignment
Students are asked to explore ways of making campuses and communities safer, investigate how best to respond to threats, and produce tech ideas that could save lives. Using both technology for creating tech solutions and creating content to drive awareness. CPUT students were given 24hours to build solutions to fight GBV.Top 5 solutions will be given 5 days to turn their ideas into businesses.
To learn more about Hostbeak and Snake Nation, click the links for more details
Grant Reports
Patrick Rahy for Kult provides new updates and improvements in Grant Report 1
Hello guys! Weβre happy to share with you Kult's Interim Report. The Grant kicked off for us on June 2021, and it will last until June 2022 (we requested a no-cost extension to have more time to accomplish our initial goals). And this cover image is the team of founders Patrick, Helena, Diogo and Phablulo in Websummit Lisbon, November 2021 :D
Project Update
We had several improvements during the funded period. It is not unfair to say that Kult is a completely different platform, now that we are heading to the end of the Grant period. However, we also had some setbacks, as any startup is supposed to.Looking back, we consider that our biggest win so far was to achieve the initial purpose of Kult: building a community of thousands of culture-lovers, debating and sharing cultural content online, while monetizing human curation without ads. The Kult community proved that it is way better to discover content with real people, instead of letting algorithms tell us what to watch/listen/read. As a struggle, we can say it was complicated to popularize the Web Monetization technology. Our main users are Portuguese speakers (Brazilian and Portuguese) and they faced barriers to adopt the WM feature, as we are going to see later on this report.
Gavin Chait for Qwyre reflects and plans for future in final report
Streaming micropayments - web monetization - is new. And the online new is no longer absorbed into society with the unquestioning rapture of the 1990s. Neither should it.
From cryptocurrency pump and dump fraud to wildly hyperbolic promises to the tech industry's complicity in genocide ... there are many reasons for the average person to be sceptical of the new.
So, while the technical challenges are great, the social ones - of building trust, resilience, and engagement - are even greater.
Yet the promise of disintermediated micropayments is greater still. It is up to us, the community of web monetization makers, to earn that trust.
What follows may seem unduly negative, but it helps to take stock. To have a realistic appraisal of what challenges us as we take our first tentative steps in this new medium. And, mostly, for me to recognise what I got right, wrong, and still have to reckon with.
Ciaran for Interruptor bring project to close in final report
We've reached the end of the grant period, and we're happy to say that we've managed to achieve all of our main objectives.
In terms of technical implementation, things went fairly smoothly. All of the bonus features we planned for Web Monetization users were implemented, and the last couple of months were spent refining them.
As for our community intiatives, it was great to have fellow grantee Kult at our last event, where we talked about what Web Monetization is, how to implement it, how it can help creators monetize their work.
While things have gone well tech-wise and there seems to be interest from the community about Web Monetization, we're still facing a couple of challenges.
You can read more about each project in full at the above links.
Community Posts
Radhy asked the community for advice.
I know Rafiki isn't ready yet, but I've been wanting to try running Rafiki on my local machine. Tested it on Mac mini M1 chip, but got crash when trying build with Docker.
If you have a comment or suggestion, head over to Radhyβs post and leave a note.
Meet the new GftW Community Ambassador Lawil Karama
Last week, we introduced Lawil to the community.
Lawil is a community builder and networker with extensive experience. Furthermore she is our first female Ambassador from Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Lawil's diverse background means she has a different perspective and filter on what the needs of the users are.
With this perspective she will support the Interledger Foundation to reach new communities and connect GFW with fringe communities and niche spaces. Lawil will help make sure that the GFW attracts more participation from around the globe.
Lawil describes her motivation to work on Grant for the Web as,
There is an inherent need for equality and equity in the world today. I often feel as if we are still looking for thought leaders to create a new equilibrium and redefine our future.
As a creative, I am always on the move between different spaces. It is where I feel most at home but personally for me, inspiration comes from being surrounded with people who engage with the world, who know their presence and influence on it and use it to shape it with any form of creativity. To support and expand the communities they engage with.
Ensuring that these voices help shape the Grant for the Web and Web Monetization movement, My goal is to empower a diverse group of thought leaders to share their input on everything from the design of the fund's grant-making process to how we see Web Monetization develop in the coming years. By providing tangible resources such as grant writing support, pre grantee community engagement to strengthen the equity of underrepresented communities.
Please take a moment to say hello and welcome Lawil.
Community Events in April
For the month of April, we are happy to announce two community engagement events to be hosted by GftW awardees. This is an ongoing series of live community gatherings that will focus on building connections, sharing knowledge, and advancing the Web Monetization ecosystem.
Community Call
Join us on Tuesday, April 19 at 9:00 am EST for a Community Call hosted by GftW awardees Hessel van Oorschot and Meghan LaclΓ© of Free Music Archive.
During this call, Hessel and Meghan want to discuss how they are creating avenues to empower self-releasing artists and spend time with the participants to share opinions and (our) lessons learned.
To register for this event go to: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/310759890197
Up Next! Project Skill Sharing Community Event
We are also excited to bring our next Project Skill Sharing community event hosted by awardee Gavin Chait of Qwyre on Monday, April 25 at 10:00 am EST.
Join Gavin Chait, scifi author, and developer of Qwyre.com, as he shares his experience in developing for monetization, and offers guidance and thoughts on how to integrate the APIs into your own mobile project. Also, learn about African science fiction, and share a coffee during this event.
To register for this event go to: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/310769438757
Stay tuned, there's more to come!
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