Small Grants: FloriNouns for FGCU class project

⌐◨-◨Hello NounsDao! I’m Prof Werder and teach a class on Blockchain Applications at Florida Gulf Coast University in the School of Entrepreneurship. And I’m a tad Nouns obsessed tbh. ⌐◨-◨

⌐◨-◨ This is the first semester for this course and we are heading into our final 8 weeks of the class. As a final project option, I’m creating an assignment where the students will create nouns with a Florida focus and a few that will be original to FGCU (e.g. a baseball head with noun letters SALE on the shirt for one of our famous alums, Chris Sale of the Red Sox). There will be 1997 created at a mint price of .025 (we were founded in 1997 and are celebrating our 25th anniversary this year). I also want to allow for free mints for the students and cover some of the gas for them if needed so about 1497 will be available.

⌐◨-◨ For this grant, I’m seeking .97 eth to assist with costs involved in creating and launching this project. I plan to utilize Factoria (thank you Sidenoun for this recommendation). More importantly, I’d love the blessing of NounsDao for this project. In return, we’ll provide pre-sale list access to NounsDao and Nouncil projects, as well as a few free mints to be used as community giveaways.

⌐◨-◨ Big Picture: the class is more than a typical course and will turn into a DAO when completed. Students who pass successfully will have the option to join the DAO which will hopefully fund future student projects in web3, as well as possibly creating some income for these students, allowing for these future entrepreneurs to fund their own ventures.

⌐◨-◨ Bigger Picture: I am also working on a project to share my curriculum and what I’ve learned this first semester teaching this course with others Entrepreneurship educators via a certification course within an association for higher ed entrepreneurship educators. I’d love to incorporate the option of using CC0 projects such as Nouns and Cryptoadz as learning tools for the students in order to create quality projects that help them earn as well as learn. With this venture, I’ll be sharing NounsDao’s efforts with a whole new audience.

⌐◨-◨ Thank you for considering my proposal!

⌐◨-◨ PS: has a DAO ever endowed a chair at a University? Want to be the first?

Sounds pretty cool - a college class turning into a DAO doing an NFT mint around Nounish ideas

Will you be able to provide us with somewhat regular content updates?

Can you provide a little more information on the class? Is there a syllabus or other information?

This seems fun! Would love to see this process become scalable for people wanting to make Nouns projects. Lot’s to learn about creating on-chain SVG, etc that could be great for the broader community.

I would absolutely share content updates and we’ll be doing sneak peeks along the way. This will move quickly as the class ends May 2 for this semester.

We are currently offering this as a Special Topics class this semester (first time offered) and it will remain that way until we can work it into our regular curriculum which will likely be Fall 2023. This actually should be two courses–an intro and a project class–but I’m happy to at least have the one (with 2 sections of students – 75 total).

When I originally designed the class, I didn’t think we could pull off a project during the semester but the students really wanted to launch something during the class so we are going for it! They can create their own OR they will have the option to work on this project which I will manage (and also contribute to as well). Regardless of the option they choose, they will also create/design nouns to add to this collection.

And I’m happy to share the syllabus! I also printed a pdf of the modules from the Learning Management System (Canvas) to give you and idea of what they have covered thus far in the class. I didn’t see a way to upload files so I’m sharing them via Google Drive: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1wnT309ikZHH18thMmXSqh-WDSr_6Ghvr?usp=sharing

I expect to make some changes over the summer but the basic framework will stay for next semester. I’m meeting with someone later this week to discuss the certification program/webinar that will be on-boarding new entrepreneurship educators to this space.

This would also be the first NFT collection created via a class project at our University. Thank you all for considering this and look forward to further comments/questions.

ok great. would you be cool with posting weekly/biweekly updates here and on twitter?

Yes – would love to provide weekly updates and then bi-weekly or even daily as we get closer to a launch at the end of April. We will be creating a seaparte Twitter account but I will also provide updates/retweets under @profwerder as well.

And for some more clarity, we will be curating and designing this collection rather than a randomly computer generated one in order to create a Florida/FGCU focused collection. Here is an example using Flamingo head (flipped) with blue/green glasses from the Lost Nouns assets and FGCU on the body as an accessory. I want the students to have some creativity in this while making this a cohesive collection.

Again, looking to the bigger picture, other universities can use a similar approach but use different assets to reflect their environments e.g. mountain instead of wave etc. I had a meeting this morning and it does look like I will be developing and presenting a seminar in June to other Entrepreneurship educators and hope to use this project as a template for them. It would be fun to see Nouns incorporated across unversities with their own distinct look and feel. (Nouns March Madness anyone?)

Due to the limitations of time and skills development, it is much easier to utilitze CC0 assets then to start from absolute scratch and I do think I can encourage others in that regard. From the entrepreneurship education piece, this also allows skill development in other areas such as budgeting, financial statements and marketing.

flamingoFGCU21000×1000 48.9 KB

We will also look to develope a new Eagle head in the same pixel style to reflect our mascot.

ok cool, let’s do it. can you join the Nouns discord and DM me there please?

Fantastic! I am in the discord (profwerder#8300) so I will jump in now and dm you.

Update 3/22: I wanted to share a few 1/1 (or 1/n ?) for the collection – although really all of them are 1/1 in a way. These are specific honorary ones for three of our special alums – Baseball for Chris Sale (Red Sox), Volleyball for Brooke Sweat (Olympic beach volleyball) and Basketball for Brandon Goodwin (Cleveland Cavaliers–00 on Cavs and at FGCU). These will have different feel than the rest of the collection but will share the blue & green glasses.

The students will begin working on this project this week and I’ll be sharing their designs here. I’ve also secured DunkCityDao.eth which will be the name of the dao resulting from the class. Excited to really get this off the ground this week!

sale1000×1000 7.56 KB

Brooke Sweat 1/1

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and lastly Brandon Goodwin (had to upload individually per Discourse)

goodwin1000×1000 8.38 KB

Hello Nouns frens! I’m so excited to be moving forward with your support! I announced the news to the students and they are excited. I’ll be launching our Twitter acct today and sharing it with the world. I’ll post a link here later today!

⌐◨-◨ Officially announced to the world!

First 1/1 sneak peek on Twitter – AND I have POAP links for the first 500 followers that will give access to the pre-sale list! So give @FloriNouns a follow

I also wanted to share the assignment they have to create one “self portrait” FloriNoun for the collection. Here are the assignment instructions:

For this assignment, you will create an NFT that will be included in our overall FloriNouns project. You will need to review the information below in order to complete this assignment successfully. This Noun should represent you and reflect your personality and/or interests.

You will submit either:

• a jpeg or png image file with your final design (up to 100 points)
• OR a description of the traits you selected and why – select head, body, accessories, glasses (must be blue and/or green), and background (up to 85 points)
• NOTE: traits can be from Nouns or LostNouns

NOTE: your submission should include: the image file, a list of the traits used (these will be noted as the properties for the NFT), how you would like to be listed as the artist (e.g. initials, name, pseudonym) AND a brief description as to why you created it this way – your inspiration (just a couple sentences).

Creating your own derivatives

“At its core, a Noun is glasses, a body, and a noun for a head on a 32x32px canvas. Nouns typically keep their snouts, handles, cords, and other appendages inside the area defined by a circle drawn within this canvas for use as a clean profile pic. Now that you know the rules: break them!” https://nouns.notion.site/Creating-your-own-derivatives-b58276ff4e6b41be8528f75c0e8042ed (Links to an external site.)

Nouns DAO site : https://nouns.wtf/ (Links to an external site.)

What is Nouns: https://nouns.notion.site/A-Brief-Introduction-to-Nouns-90485892d0c54ef1be05abf0ecfc18da (Links to an external site.)

Notion site with detailed info: https://nouns.notion.site/Explore-Nouns-a2a9dceeb1d54e10b9cbf3f931c2266f (Links to an external site.)

Nouns Virtuous Cycle: https://nouns.notion.site/The-Nouns-Virtuous-Cycle-b7f5bf4ba69d47bb93ce07ef21bea8ee (Links to an external site.)

Lost Nouns: https://lostnouns.wtf/ (Links to an external site.) traits: https://lostnouns.wtf/traits (Links to an external site.)

Nouns Center – great resource for all things Nouns – you will need this site for the assets themselves: https://nouns.center (Links to an external site.)

Nouns Traits: https://nouns.center/traits (Links to an external site.)

Nouns Assets for downloading: https://nouns.center/assets (Links to an external site.)

thanks so much for the updates! this all sounds great

Just posted another sneak peek! You’ll find it on twitter here:

Really enjoying watching (some of) the students really dive in and get creative with their nouns. I think this is going to be a really fun and enlightening experience for many of them. And of course I have the ones who spend minimal effort but hey welcome to college students! lol I’ll start sharing their creations in the next couple days – they are just submitting them this week.

We’ve been head down, hard at work – and have been sharing sneak peeaks on Twitter and Instagram. We were hoping to mint to today but are pushing back to Tuesday to tweak a few things and get them right before then. I’ve really enjoyed watching the students really start to connect to the Nouns ecosystem and start to feel a part of that community. Here’s our latest tweet and sneak peeks!

AND the day is finally here! We minted our first FloriNouns! The first 150 were sent to the Dunk City Dao wallet – one will be sent to each student (their self portrait nouns), a few will be held permanentaly (eg FloriNouns 1) and the rest will be used for giveaways and other promotion. The first 4 have been minted and we are very excited!

We literally couldn’t have done it without the small grant from Nouns DAO – we’ll shout this out again later today. Just that small amount helped us cover the deployment costs, ENS registration and will also cover the gas to airdrop the FloriNouns to the students. We so appreciate your support!

The fist 4 FloriNouns minted (after the 150 that was sent to the DAO wallet)

This was a long time ago, but it’s an amazing proposal. As a business owner with ties to small colleges who could use this stuff, I’m impressed with the initiative here. Hope you don’t mind if I model some proposals after this one.

Thanks for the kind words! We’ll be doing a version 2 of this soon and of course please share with the world!

OMG! I never thought I would see my alumni on here haha! I love this so much! I went to FGCU and then finished up my undergrad at UCF. I am still living in Central Florida. Working on our own proposal here soon with The Fashion Dao in the next week or so. You guys def have my support! Would love to connect off here also. I am on Twitter with the same username. Shoot me a dm! https://twitter.com/SwoleLuksoBags