I believe my journey with the academy started with the Decoded event in Buenos Aires 2022. I was working with Gabriel, and during one of our meetings, we decided to explore what was going on in the Polkadot Ecosystem.
I remember three awesome talks pretty well today: two from Argentinian guys, that were working at Parity, Santiago Balaguer and Javier Viola. The 3rd talk was from Gavin Wood and blow my mind 🤯 . He talked about OpenGov.
I have always read about governance in different Ethereum protocols and that talk inspired me to continue watching to Polkadot ecosystem.
Later, I received an email about the academy that was going to take place in Argentina (my home country 🇦🇷 ) and started to think, that was a great opportunity to learn more about Polkadot and blockchain in general. The only problem was that I had to learn Rust in only 2 months 😂 .
After a few weeks of applying, I had the interview with Tim from Parity and later on, I received the exam. The exam was challenging, but the tests already made, make easier for me to learn while I was doing it and validating the code. I have to say that in my dev career, I was very used to learning new things in a pretty small time, so I even enjoyed finishing the exam.
Later on, I was accepted at the academy 🙌🏼 !!! I took a summer vacation with my family before beginning at the University of Law in Argentina, because I knew the academy would be very demanding.
During the first week, we had classes about cryptography, economics and game theory from Gavin Wood! I have to say that he is a great teacher, and the classes were incredible because we asked a lot of questions, and he was enthusiastic about teaching and answering everything in detail!
We also had our first exercise, which was very difficult. I stayed up for two nights trying to solve it 😡 !
The co-work and chill space was amazing, and we had incredible breakfasts, lunch, and snacks. We only had to focus on studying, doing assignments, and networking!
We had five fantastic weeks with days that we stayed at the university from 9 am to 6 pm with lessons, and then some side events until 10 pm or midnight. Yeah...
🔥 It was intense! VERY intense 🔥
But it was worth it. Not only for what we learned but also for the incredible people we met along the way 🧉.
We also had lessons with Rob Habermeier and the core team of Parity, like Shawn or Kian. They and other Parity and W3F developers were in the common spaces every week to share chats or discuss specific Polkadot topics. (You can view the full curriculum in the academy link)
We had 4 assignments during the academy, and each one was related to the topics we learned during the week. They were very challenging in particular the 3rd one where we built a Pallet with substrate.
If you are trying to enter the web3 space or you are already on it but want to go more in-depth, learn Rust 🦀, substrate and ink! Please, Don’t hesitate and let this opportunity pass you by 🛤.
You can have the best teachers in the ecosystem, willing to teach you and you only have to pay for your flight trip 🛫 !
Please feel free to contact me through LinkedIn if you have any questions.
Links from Polkadot:
Polkadot Academy + https://polkadot.network/development/academy/
Personal Links: