My name is Ebuka Arinze, the Project Manager of the just concluded Harmony Naija DAO Virtual Hackathon. I was the governor who managed the Hackathon, and my role involved planning, executing, and general coordination of the hackathon. I always count it a privilege to serve the DAO, and I have always given my best. This would never change.
Some issues have come up regarding the Hackathon process. I would like to point out that we were as just and open with the process as possible, and to the best of our abilities. There were AMAs, open discussions, and several times teams questions were attended to. We wanted this to be a huge success, and put our best efforts into ensuring this. However, we are not oblivious of possible human errors that can occur, or mistakes. We are grateful for the existing community, knowing that we are pushing for ONE cause.
Again, I would love to reiterate that governors are first community members. And the DAO is community first. This means that they have the right to participate in community programs. Amongst the Hackathon participants, we had just a Governor, Seyi, of team Dexfiat. To maintain fairness, we excluded Seyi from all administrative functions regarding the program. There was no preferential treatment for him, as with all participants in the competition. All submissions are public, and everyone can verify this. You can review the entire registration list from the hackathon to validate my point. You can find the link below for the sake of transparency.
We divided the governors into two groups. Three Governors in one group were Hackathon judges. We informed the community of this decision consistently, and there was no objection at any point. We even had an open AMA session with all the judges, and all teams were present during the kickoff call on Discord. The other 5 Governors were allocated to manage and follow up with teams participating in the hackathon. Each team can confirm that they had a Governor check in with them during the course of the Hackathon.
You can review the list of judges from the hackathon from the official hackathon website (http://hackathon.naijadao.one/) and review the allocation of the remaining governor to supervise teams participating in the hackathon by viewing the team grouping on our discord channel (Discord)
Also, in the spirit of fairness and transparency, judges did not have access to information on participating teams and their projects. The 5 governors coordinating and managing the hackathon had a private channel on Discord where they deliberated on hackathon-related matters. No judge, even Governor judges, were not aware of information going on here. Relevant information was made accessible to judges during judging time, as we continued to uphold transparency.
We had three judges from the harmony team.
The external Judges Include
GIV - Giv Parvaneh
George L - (Governor in the harmony Developer DAO) Profile - GeorgeofEmmaInterest - Harmony Community Forum
Toni - (Governor in the harmony Developer DAO and Winner of Harmony Protocol Last Hackathon) - Profile - toni - Harmony Community Forum
You can find details of their judging in the link below to see how they scored and judged each team. The link below shows the raw judging by each of the judges that participated in the judging process.
And the link below shows the summarized update of the judges’ scores and teams’ compiled positions.
We gave the judges judging criteria to judge by, and We communicated this to everyone several times, and it has been available on the official website of the hackathon (http://hackathon.naijadao.one/). We also communicated the method of judging to the community and the judges several times.
The participation and judging process was fair, honest, and transparent.
I would also like to point out that if the community required that only the eternal judges’ result be used for the grading, we can go with this. But every judge was allowed room to give honest, bias-free positions on each project. We also created feedback options so teams could know what to work and improve on, even after the Hackathon.
We have ensured that all the links and documents that carry the hackathon event information have been made public to the entire community, and we have done our best to make things as transparent as possible.
On telegram, a community member pointed out that I have a hacker role on discord. As the administrator of the discord server and key organizer of the hackathon, I ensured I had all the roles to ensure I managed all the channels appropriately. I saw a comment where I was asked who wrote out a comment for me, and I find that very disrespectful. Maybe I should introduce myself a bit again. I am Ebuka Arinze, First Class Graduate of Civil Engineering from the University of Benin, Nigeria. I am a recipient of the Tony Elumelu Foundation Award for Entrepreneurship in Africa, with three start-ups running successfully, amidst several honorary awards. I would request that the community member note this, and not talk down on my proven intellectual capabilities over slight misunderstandings on Telegram.
This has been a successful event, and I am happy for the winners. I hope this clears every doubt of transparency and fairness by the community members. We are open to learning and growing as a DAO, and I believe in the greater things we would achieve, together, in this space.
WAGMI