Launching the Optimistic Academy

[santicristobal]

Hi everyone! I would like to introduce The Optimistic Academy.

TL;DR:

We are building The Optimistic Academy to make learning about Optimism 10x easier. We would love to get your feedback and ideas since it will help us make a much better work.

The problem

I’m Santi, cofounder of Solow. Solow is a free academy for builders with thousands of students and also an active member of the Optimism Collective. We are working on a Mission to Spread the Optimistic Vision across Latam.

While researching and creating the content for our mission, we noticed a HUGE problem: there is no place to learn about the Collective in a structured and engaging way.

Information is scattered all over the place. To understand how every piece of the Collective fits together people have to go through the blog, the docs, the forum, discord, and specific docs and websites for innovations such as the OP Stack or the Superchain.

If we want the Collective to succeed in its heart-filling mission, we need to onboard as many talented people as possible. And for that to happen, we really need to improve the learning experience.

That’s the goal of the Optimistic Academy: onboard thousands of people by making it 10x easier to learn about Optimism.

The Optimistic Academy

The Optimism Academy is a place where people can learn about Optimism in a structured and engaging way.

We created a series of to-the-point, engaging video courses combined with interactive quizzes and “real-world” assignments to facilitate understanding of the Collective and its underlying vision and tech.

Our endgame is to have courses on all the major topics concerning Optimism:

• Optimistic Vision
• Public Goods and RetroPGF
• OP Mainnet
• The OP Stack
• The Superchain
• Optimism Governance
• The Ambassador Program
• Identity and Attestations
• etc etc etc

But you know the saying… Rome wasn’t built in a day.

We decided to begin with a 90-minute Intro to Optimism course that will give people EVERYTHING they need to know to get involved, either as a dev, an ambassador, or an active governance member.

We have already published the first 2 chapters of the course and will be publishing new chapters every week until the course is complete.

Once the first course is complete, we will gather as much feedback as we can to start working on more specific courses.

How can you help?

We are at a very early stage, so YOUR FEEDBACK CAN MAKE A REAL DIFFERENCE. It would mean the world to us if you could take a few minutes to check the course and tell us what you think.

You can do so by heading to: https://app.optimistic.academy/

Any ideas or feedback you might have will be extremely valuable, so please don’t hesitate to share what you think on any level. Both public and private feedback is highly appreciated.

Some specific questions we would love the community to help answer:

• how would you improve the content? (please note we are currently working on improving video quality through professional editors and will update video lectures as soon as possible).
• which ideas or concepts are a must for an Intro to Optimism course?
• is it OK to use Optimism branding? or should we create a new one to distinguish OP Academy from official sources.
• is it OK to invite learners to the forum to discuss the course’s ideas and complete their assignments?
• we will do video-lectures, quizzes, and practical assignments. What else would you add?

About us

While this is an entirely separate project, for transparency reasons it is worth noting that we are part of the team behind Solow.

Solow is a free academy for builders in Latam. We’ve done education in every possible format you can think of, reaching over 30k students and evolving into a 3k people communtiy. Our activities included live courses, gamified courses, trivia, spaces, hackathons, articles, tutorials, quests, etc etc etc.

We built Solow to make learning crypto free, fun, and easy. We have a real opportunity to make the world better and we believe that education is the best way to make sure that happens.

In our 2 years of experience in crypto education, we worked with leading industry players, including but not limited to Connext, Chainlink, CoW Swap, Lens Protocol, Push Protocol, Kleros, and MetisDAO.

Most importantly, we are currently working on a Mission to Spread the Optimistic Vision across Latam.

[CryptoReuMD]

A very nice approach Santi.
I admire all your projects and everything that you do and also all the things that you are trying to make the governance easier and in the best way for everyone in the space.
I’m happy to help and if need more diffusion we can help.
Kudos to the Solow team

[dmars300]

Hi Santi and the team at Solow,

First of all, I want to share my congrats to you for taking the initiative to launch The Optimistic Academy. Community education endeavors like these are vital for the proliferation of the Optimistic Vision.

Branding and Website Design

Your mission is clear, but the branding could be more aligned with the official Optimism platform. For instance, a website design that closely resembles Optimism.io would create a sense of cohesion and make the learning experience feel more reliable. A more customized website that captures the ethos of Optimism would be optimal.

Solow Resource or Community Resource?

I noticed that you’re part of the team behind Solow, and I’m curious: is this academy intended as a Solow resource or a broader community resource? If it’s the latter, I’d recommend making the educational content open-source. Allowing the community to contribute via PRs could enrich the learning experience and add valuable perspectives.

Answers to your questions:

1. How would you improve the content?

While the substance of the content is top-notch, it could benefit from a more visually engaging presentation. Currently, it appears to be a person talking to a camera, which is informative but may not fully captivate your audience.

2. Which ideas or concepts are a must for an Intro to Optimism course?

Essential Topics:
The core topics for an introductory course on Optimism should definitely cover:

• OP Mainnet: Basics and how it fits into the broader Ethereum ecosystem
• OP Stack: A deep dive into the tech stack and its components
• Bedrock: Understanding the foundational elements of Optimism
• Superchain: What it is, and why it’s critical for scaling solutions

3. Is it OK to use Optimism branding? Or should we create a new one to distinguish OP Academy from official sources?

I think it’s acceptable to use Optimism branding as long as you specify that this is a community initiative. That said, consulting with the Optimism foundation about the use of their branding would be a prudent step.

4. Is it OK to invite learners to the forum to discuss the course’s ideas and complete their assignments?

Absolutely, inviting learners to the forum is a fantastic idea. It can act as an objective metric to gauge the number of people you’ve onboarded. Additionally, forums offer a space for organic discussions, queries, and feedback, which can be invaluable for iterative improvements to your courses.

Suggested Additions

If I may, I’d suggest incorporating videos from our mission at Cryptoversidad, as they cover essential topics and are visually captivating. Our materials could serve as a useful supplement to your existing content, making the educational journey even more enriching for the community.

I look forward to seeing how The Optimistic Academy evolves and am eager to contribute in any way that I can. Please let me know how we can help!

Diego,

[Jrocki]

Hello hello!

Small disclaimer, I work for the Optimism Foundation, but this is me speaking personally

Thank you for creating this. It is quite good and geared towards new comers which is what I believe we need

My only suggestions are minor:

1. At the start of each lesson there is a cool intro with music that lasts like 18 seconds until you get to the learning portion. I found myself fast forwarding each lesson to get to the content as I was completing the lessons one after the other.
2. The verbal content was good but I also learn better with visuals. Personally I would enjoy it is there was a visual representation of what you were talking about.

[Gonna.eth]

Nice! Do you think you can include a wallet sign-in? of guest mode if I don’t want to provide an email address?

[santicristobal]

Hey ser! Thank you very much for your support It’s great to see Latam standing up to support each other and push forward.

[santicristobal]

Hey @dmars300! Thanks a lot for taking the time to provide thorough and valuable feedback, we really appreciate it.

Your comments will definitely help shape the Optimistic Academy and better define our mission.

I’ll reply to each of your ideas and suggestions separately to keep the discussion as organized as possible, in an attempt to invite other community members to engage with it.

@dmars300

Your mission is clear, but the branding could be more aligned with the official Optimism platform

This is very good to know! We had some doubts on weather it would be more impactful to use our own branding or Optimism’s. After putting in some more thought and receiving feedback from you and other community members, we decided we will shift to a more Optimism aligned branding both in the landing page and in the additional resources we implement going forward.

@dmars300

I noticed that you’re part of the team behind Solow, and I’m curious: is this academy intended as a Solow resource or a broader community resource?

Thanks a lot for raising this point, which is KEY to truly understand where we are heading with the Optimistic Academy. The Optimistic Academy is an entirely separate project from Solow.

While both projects have some members in common, they have very different goals. Solow is a free academy for builders in Latam. Which means it’s 100% Spanish focused. It’s also “chain” agnostic. Solow has worked with other industry leaders such as Connext, Chainlink, CoW Swap, Lens, etc.

The Optimistic Academy, on the other hand, is exclusively Optimism focused, as you might have guessed by the name . The goal of the Optimistic Academy is to make it 10x easier to learn about Optimism, which takes us to your next suggestion.

@dmars300

I’d recommend making the educational content open-source. Allowing the community to contribute via PRs could enrich the learning experience and add valuable perspectives.

We totally agree on this point. Our mid-term plan is to go beyond video lectures to add both additional original content and any valuable community resources. This includes not only the fantastic work you and the Cryptoversidad team accomplished in your last mission, but other great initiatives such as the Optimism Reservoir, the RetroPGF Podcast and the Optimism Guide. By the way, super open to hear any ideas on how to integrate what you are working on @Michael @danftz @latruite.eth

How would you shift to an open source model? How would you implement PR? Would love to go deeper into what’s on your mind.

Moving on to the content itself, I think it was Linkedin’s cofounder who said “if you aren’t ashamed of your MVP, you waited too long to launch”. And to be honest I still feel cringe when looking at my self recordings

We are working hard to make the content much better, having community feedback so early on is really really helpful on this matter.

@dmars300

While the substance of the content is top-notch, it could benefit from a more visually engaging presentation.

We have 2 ideas for making more visually engaging presentations:

• adding animations to the video lecture to emphasize key points.
• blending in “infographics” in within the video lectures to make the content more appealing.

We plan to try both methods. Any insight on which could perform better? Your experience creating top-notch content at Cryptoversidad could be very useful.

We will also play around with transitions, zooming in and out and of course some fancy old-style memes.

With regards to the substance and the topics following lessons should include, we hadn’t thought of it before, but your comments led us into the conclusion that it’s worth sharing with the community the content outline BEFORE recording. This will help us make the most out of the recording and editing efforts. Chapters on Public Goods and OP Tech have been recorded already, but we will start with sharing our thoughts for the Governance chapter so it becomes the first community built chapter within the Optimistic Academy.

Finally, we are happy that you believe inviting learners to the forum is a fantastic idea. We are really looking forward to see how that plays out.

Again, thanks for all your thoughts and support. we’ll be back with more news (and questions) very soon.

Santi

[santicristobal]

Hi @Gonna.eth! The plan is to include a wallet sign-in but we are not able to implement it yet. I might be able to set a guest mode, but I’m not entirely sure. I’ll let you know if I can get it going.

[santicristobal]

Thanks a lot for your feedback! We really appreciate it, since it helps us focus our efforts where they matter most.

1. At the start of each lesson there is a cool intro with music that lasts like 18 seconds until you get to the learning portion. I found myself fast forwarding each lesson to get to the content as I was completing the lessons one after the other.

YES!!! This is something another community member outlined and definitively worth implementing ASAP.

2. The verbal content was good but I also learn better with visuals. Personally I would enjoy it is there was a visual representation of what you were talking about.

What kind of visual representation are you thinking of? Could you please provide an example that you like? That would be EXTREMELY helpful. We are currently comparing different alternatives and haven’t decided yet on the best way to make the visuals more engaging.

Also, anything we could do to make it even more useful to newcomers?

We are planning to add a closing chapter entirely devoted to “Next Steps” so people new to the ecosystem have a very clear outline of how the can contribute.

Thanks again, we really appreciate your feedback and support
Best,
Santi

[TheBigMave]

@santicristobal

check the course

Great update i will definetly take the course

[santicristobal]

Optimistic Academy Update #1 - New chapter on Public Goods available!

Hey everyone, I’m super happy to hit the forum with the Optimistic Academy’s first update. We plan to do this updates regularly to:

1. let you know when new chapters and courses
2. let you know of changes or updates we do to existing content
3. ask questions and get feedback from the community
4. share next steps and ideas

We’ve launched a new chapter on Public Goods!

The chapter features lessons on:

• What is a Public Good
• RetroPGF
• The virtuous cycle of RetroPGF
• Results and learnings from RetroPGF 2
• What’s coming? RetroPGF 3

We also added some additional material (which we hadn’t in previous chapters) and of course, an amazing quiz involving the US government and some famous Spanish expressions.

We are working on editing the videos to add animations

There’s not much to explain here, we will add animations to the videos so we can make them more appealing

We are working to add community-created resources

We will soon include many community-built resources as complementary materials within the academy.

We plan to include:

• The Optimistic Guide
• The RetroPGF podcast
• The Optimistic Reservoir
• Videos made by Cryptoversidad team for their mission

We really want the Optimistic Academy to be a collective work and are thinking of the best way to insert these resources into our planned learning path

Request for feedback

This is an open request for feedback. It helps us keep improving and, most importantly, make sure we put our focus where it matters the most.

Thanks again for all the help!

What’s next

Hopefully, we can add the community resources very soon. We also have another chapter soon-to-be-launched, so you can expect a further update next week.

Also, we plan to create social media channels for the Optimistic Academy. We realized that our efforts would be much more valuable if we worked to get people to know more about what we are building, so that’s what we will do!

Best,
Santi

[santicristobal]

Optimistic Academy Update #2 - New chapter on Optimism Tech!

Hey everyone, time for the Optimistic Academy’s second update.

Over the last 2 weeks, we’ve:

• launched a new chapter: Optimism Tech
• created the Academy’s social media: Twitter and Youtube
• start creating content: here’s our first thread. I know it ain’t much, but it’s honest work
• incorporated fantastic community resources

New chapter: Optimism Technology

Our first available course is intended to provide a comprehensive overview of everything Optimism. This includes the Collective, retroPGF and Public Goods funding, and of course, Optimism technology.

The new chapter consists of 7 videos:

• Intro to the chapter
• Design principles
• Optimism tech landscape
• OP Mainnet
• the OP Stack
• the Superchain
• chapter overview

Live on Twitter and Youtube

We realized that to make the Optimistic Academy reach 1000s of people, we need to start working on building strong distribution channels.

That’s why we recently created Twitter and YouTube accounts. We plan to share content related to the academy and to the ecosystem as a whole.

PS: it would mean the world to us if you give as a follow and help spread the word.

We might add new channels (blog, Spotify and newsletter) but would like to understand how to collaborate with existing contributors first. This leads us to our next highlight…

We FINALLY added community-built resources to the Academy

Our goal is very easy to understand: we want to make learning about Optimism 10x easier. And we believe we can achieve that by providing users with a structured and engaging learning path. We built the Academy to be that path and created A LOT of content to fit the Academy’s structure.

HOWEVER, there are several other awesome resources that could be very valuable in improving people’s learning experience, so we added them to the Academy. The plan is to keep updating these materials often, but for the time being, we included the following:

• The Optimistic Guide by @danftz

• The Optimistic Reservoir by @latruite.eth

• Videos made by the Cryptoversidad team for their mission @dmars300

Our first cool piece of content: a thread on where to learn about Optimism

Oh my god, is this me asking you to help us spread the word AGAIN? Maybe, but it’s also a request for feedback and an opportunity to highlight amazing resources to onboard new people to the Collective.

Making content is super cool, but distribution is probably the hardest part, so we might as well help each other walk further!

Next steps

We are soon flying to ZuConnect so I don’t want to overpromise and then underdeliver, BUT, we are looking forward to:

• publish the governance chapter (almost ready……)
• upload ALL our videos to Youtube (this means you can watch them without logging in @Gonna.eth!!)
• get some content out there
• and…

Interviewing cool people - this is an open invite to join us!

Last but not least, we are now ready to start doing what we enjoy the most: talking to people. We will be doing interviews with cool people, and, lucky thing, there´s plenty of cool people at the Optimism Collective.

If you wanna have a chat on tech, governance, public goods, network state, memes, economics and other fun stuff to be displayed at the Academy, please reach out!

Best,
Santi