Women Building = WAGMI
Before we get into the details of the sheer awesomeness that led up to the formation of Women Build Web3, it’s important for me to talk about why I’m interested in getting more women and nonbinary people engineering in web3 (and in web2, but ya’ll already knew that).
Women make up roughly 51% of the global population but currently only hold ~20% of engineering roles. Web3 is about putting the power back into the hands of the builders, and if that power only goes to a group of largely men, we’re going to end up back in the same systems of inequality that we are trying to abandon. If women are not making decisions to shape the future of the world we live in, we’re going to continue to see oppressive and dangerous technology being built.
A lot of people seem to think that initiatives surrounding women and people of color engineering come from a place of social good. In reality, more women and people of color building tech that powers the globe is a strategy for innovation. At this point is well known that companies with diverse executive teams and engineering staff outperform homogenous teams. We should push for this not only because it’s the right thing to do, but because it will help us innovate better, quicker, and more inclusively.
Started Out With A Tweet, How Did It End Up Like This
A few weeks ago I was gearing up to hack at Web3Con, the conference and hackathon organized by Developer Dao. I knew that I wanted to have a team of women and put out this tweet looking for a jr. woman developer to join my team in the hopes of helping them build a dapp for the first time:
https://twitter.com/camiinthisthang/status/1497283088774172673?s=20&t=UWPA7Zaabos04KSP2yGmQA
When I posted this tweet, I only had a couple of thousand followers and only expected a few people to reach out. Within an hour, more than 20 women had reached out expressing their interest and enthusiasm for hacking. Over the next few days I had a total of 38 women reach out. Although we couldn't all be on the same team, I figured I could help this crew of women by helping them organize into teams.
We organized a zoom call to coordinate teams, and I heard a lot of self-doubt. Almost every woman on the call expressed something along the lines of, “I don’t think I’m ready for this.” Although most of them had been learning how to code for months and even years, something made them feel like they weren’t ready.
I remembered how hard it was to get out of tutorial hell when I was learning how to code, and how being pushed to build something helped my confidence grow by a factor of infinity. I saw an opportunity to create a safe environment of support and opportunity to push them through this scary moment and get them to ship something.
Opportunity 🤝 Preparation
After hearing the general sentiment of the group, I worried that a lot of them would decide to pull out from the hackathon if they couldn’t be on a team with someone experienced to help guide them. From my experience as an educator and a once-newbie, I knew that there were a few key things I could get for the group that would guarantee their success in the hackathon:
- A technical workshop
- A dedicated technical advisor for each team
- A financial incentive for completing the hackathon
Subgraph Workshop
During this time, I had just finished writing The Complete Guide to Getting Started With The Graph, a suite of content to help developers get started with the API layer of web3. Part of this was a workshop for how to develop a subgraph for an NFT project. I knew The Graph pretty well and decided to put on a workshop to give them another tool they could summon at the hackathon.
I dm’d some people at The Graph to tell them about what we were doing and invite them to come by and hang for a little. Yaniv Tal, CEO of The Graph, Tegan Kline, Cofounder of Edge & Node, and Nader Dabit, Dev Rel Engineer at The Graph all came by to introduce themselves to the crew, talk about their path to web3, and share their perspective on the future of web3.
Dedicated Technical Advisors
With the hackathon starting in less than 24 hours, I turned to Twitter to find advisors for the teams.
https://twitter.com/camiinthisthang/status/1498129651016761344?s=20&t=q4gFVUtzArN04SVYcnSK0g
Not surprisingly, the community came through. Within a few hours we had 6 volunteers excited to usher in these new builders. Special thanks to these folks for all of their help- Kraznik, John, David, Abbey, Shannon, and Ally for making themselves available at such short notice. We invited our advisors who so graciously volunteered into the discord server, and that’s where the ✨magic✨ happened.
These self-proclaimed timid and “unprepared” women were now in the discord having technical discussions, setting up calls with advisors, and BUILDING.
Financial Incentive
With the help of our really amazing sponsors NEAR, The Graph, Protocol Labs, and Decentology, we were able to offer a private bounty to the women in this group to reward them with $1000 USD in tokens for their successful completion and submission of a project to the hackathon.
I’m a big believer in paying people for their time, and frankly, if we want to see something different in web3 engineering, we need to do something different. When I told the group I was able to secure sponsors for this effort, the vibe completely changed.
What This Means for The Ecosystem
This experience taught me there are way more women trying to enter the engineering space than we are currently supporting. A lot of women want to participate, but don’t see an accessible entry point. There’s a lack of infrastructure for mentorship and a lack of predictable outcomes for participating in things like hackathons and grants programs.
There needs to be a coordinated effort between all of the protocols, grants programs, and educational initiatives in the space to provide financial and non-financial support to existing collectives with a dedicated mission of onboarding, training, and placing women/nb engineers in the space. It’s simply not enough to onboard. We need to see a complete, end-to-end pipeline to usher in the builders the ecosystem desperately needs.
If a tweet got 30 women to gather, learn, and ship a web3 app in a matter of 36 hours, imagine what could be done with an ecosystem dedicated to fostering new talent to help us build the future of the internet.
What’s Next for WBW3
After such a great experience at Web3Con, the group decided we didn’t want this to be the end. WBW3 is forming a DAO whose mission is to provide education, opportunities, and funding to unlock a new wave of builders. We want to scope out a system to support builders from onboard to full-time offer.
Memberships are currently closed as we build out our infrastructure, but new members will be able to join really soon. Follow us on Twitter @womenbuildweb3 to get updates on joining.
I have some ambitious goals for our first year:
- Build at 10 hackathons
- Ship 100 projects
- Engage with 1000 women/nb in building in web3 for the first time
- Build a public good
- Place at least 70% of our initial cohort at full-time engineering/dev rel gigs by the end of year 1
Project Showcase
We had 6 teams of 5 women submit a project to the hackathon and they all crushed it. Most of these builders had never built an app before- ever. For most of them, this was their first time participating at a hackathon. Check out each team’s submission video below.
Team Maxima
Team Maxima created a Wordle clone that allows users to mint their results on the blockchain and donate money to a good cause.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7j8iP6tyLc
You can read a write up by two of their team members, Kristen and Afoma, here:
https://cuddleofdeath.hashnode.dev/my-first-hackathon-experience
https://afy.afomaorji.com/my-participation-in-the-just-concluded-web3con-hackathon
Team Treehouse
This team created an NFT project with the dual purpose of helping the environment, along with providing utility in the form of a metaverse asset.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JphTtSQQ6o
Check out this write up by Sarah where she breaks down their project.
https://medium.com/geekculture/creating-nfts-for-social-good-a4049901aa75
Team Hand-in-Hand
This team created a decentralized crowdsourcing platform where users can either donate to a campaign or create their own campaign.
https://www.loom.com/share/8b8534c8e9f14d199fffc07cb7d178e3
Check out this write up by Team Hand-in-Hand member Paloma who walks through her experience as a first-time hacker.
https://paloma.hashnode.dev/my-first-web3con-hackathon
Team Primero
This team built a decentralized web3 education platform and marketplace with a focus on LATAM and Africa where courses are designed as NFTs.
https://www.loom.com/share/3b3274be07394b15b77203e48f20b003
Team OurHouse
This team ideated a DAO to help alleviate the student loan and housing crisis in the United States. People would be accepted into homes owned by the DAO on a need basis based on their debt-to-income ration to give them the ability to pay off their loans faster.
https://www.loom.com/share/f730701408374f549ff2a24dcc67d43b
Team Monarch
This team created a DAO to store a deed on the blockchain and created a subgraph to index and query.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6L-2V-ZMIGQ
Check out this post by Linda where she talks about her experience hacking for the first time.
https://lindauchenwoke.hashnode.dev/my-first-web3-hackathon-experience
Connect With Us
Be on the lookout for our white paper in the coming days, and in the meantime find us on Twitter @womenbuildweb3.
If you’re a web3 company who would like to support our efforts this year, please reach out to me via Twitter @camiinthisthang.