Weekly Brunches: A continuum for you to grow with us
Written by Zarja Hude and Siiri Ruuhela
Why a continuum is important for innovation
Emerging technologies like AI/ML, blockchain, and quantum computing open up immense opportunities to shape the future. However, with their rapid advancements, these technologies are becoming ever-more complex and learning about them can feel overwhelming. With countless sources available, where do you even begin?
Once you start, the learning curve can easily be interrupted, whether by a confusing YouTube video, a friend's comment, or your very first line of code that doesnʼt work. Yet, it is precisely these explorations which are necessary to learn and, importantly, make meaningful change. Nothing changes unless people actively choose to explore the new. That means not just consuming the technology but driving innovation with it. To effectively understand and utilise emerging technologies, continuous and practical learning in a supportive environment and access to a like-minded community are essential. This is exactly the atmosphere the weekly brunches provide.
Why Weekly Brunches exist
Cambridge offers many events for entrepreneurial-minded students, and while they are often interesting, inspiring and engaging, they are also often one-off events. Consequently, they are less able to allow students to slowly but consistently build up skills, through continuous learning and a tightly knitted community.
Moreover, while many event offerings explain the technology, few of them offer detailed and dedicated guidance on its application, use cases and value-adds. Meanwhile, good projects—either in the form of products, research or policies—require a deep understanding of how technology can be used to design solutions that solve real-world problems. This understanding is best to evolve over time as ideas grow through numerous interactions with like-minded, curious and ambitious peers, as well as more experienced industry professionals.
That’s why, in October 2023, we kicked off the Weekly Brunches. The idea was simple: what if we organised workshops every week in the same format with minimal marketing, targeting smaller group of students willing to work on their projects throughout the year? How many would show up multiple times? How many would attend throughout the year?
Intent to find out, we established the following format: Meet, at the same time and in the same place, every Saturday. Namely at Kingʼs College at 12 PM. Start with a Brunch and let students from different backgrounds have time to get to know each other and have a relaxed chat—across disciplines. Head to Technical and Entrepreneurial Workshops where students choose which session to attend. The technical workshop is for those with programming knowledge, while the entrepreneurial workshop is open to all backgrounds. This combination attracts both technical and non-technical attendees, creating a fruitful environment for cross-disciplinary conversations, exploring peersʼ interests, and perhaps finding a co-founder. Conclude with Co-working/Hangout Time and students are invited for post-workshop coffee, tea, and snacks in the Turing room. This is an opportunity to reflect what has been learned, ask and answer questions, apply the workshop lessons, or simply stay around in a friendly space as long as they wish.
The community stays engaged via a dedicated community channel, where all information is circulated, questions are answered, and updates are shared.
Year 1 of the Weekly Brunches was co-hosted with the Cambridge Blockchain Society and partnered with various industry-leading companies to deliver the workshops, including VC firms Fabric Ventures, 1kx, a16z crypto, Partech, and Tagus Capital, as well as technology firms Nethermind, VitaDAO, Cambridge Future Tech, PremFina, and NEAR Foundation.
The entrepreneurial workshops covered topics from new innovations to fundraising strategies, while the technical workshops focused on building novel solutions using blockchain technology.
Here are some of the great projects that emerged during the year:
Subscription Payment System: A recurring subscription payment system using ERC-4337 Account Abstraction and ERC-7579 Modular Smart Accounts. Awarded for best use of account abstraction at ETHLondon 2024 out of 3000 projects! (Matt Beton & Barney Smith)
Lumous.ai: An AI platform for identifying the best contributors from community data based on their skills. (Siiri Ruuhela, Zarja Hude, Murat Saglam)
Project and Remote Employee Matching Platform: AI x blockchain platform that intelligently proposes packages based on company requirements and matches them with optimal employees or freelancers to optimise project time and budget. (Moy Yuan, Yuan He, Ella Xing)
Book Discovery Platform: A tool for promoting a culture of reading by facilitating better searches of book-length texts using human and machine understanding. (Shellie Audsley)
BlackCroc Trading: Sentiment analysis of Web3/Crypto from social media for trading insights. (Brandon Lockey & Hanna Glattfelder)
AC Biode: Developing chemical technologies for the green transition, including breakthroughs in plastic recycling, batteries, and medical technology. (Robert Kunzmann)
Paxmata: A marketplace connecting homeowners, developers, and lenders using tokenized construction ventures (TCV) for secure project management and funding. (Alexander Burge)
Cyclebridge: A bicycle marketplace that allows students at the University to buy and sell amongst themselves, with authentication of each side of the transaction, by either fixed price or auction. (Joe-Joe Boyes)
OpenCharity: a blockchain-based platform for charitable giving where users can track down every donation they have made. The vision of the platform is to unveil philanthropy's future with blockchain transparency. (Teng Jing)
Privacy preserving Battleships game: A Battleships game using confidential smart contract and front end for encrypted gaming with complete secrecy over player positions using private computation on Fhenix L2. Part of a wider R&D initiative for building FHE infrastructure. (Yaqub Chaudhary, Murat Saglam, Regis Greptin, Mohammed)
The brunch series has until this point included 24 workshops with 30-45 regular participants, partnerships with over 10 industry or VC firms, and 10 promising projects led and owned by participants. Together, we participated in ETHOxford and ETHLondon hackathons with larger students groups (many of them attending for the first time), including a hack victory at ETHLondon!
Eyes on October 2024
As we prepare for the academic year 2024-2025, Weekly Brunches will return, bigger and better. They will expand beyond Web3 to cover a wider range of focus areas, reflecting the interests and feedback we received from students this year. Other structural enhancements will be announced soon. In the meantime, if youʼd like to join us in supporting the brightest minds on their journeys, please get in touch. We look forward to making the next year another success.
To learn more or if you have any additional questions please contact Siiri Ruuhela (smlr2@jbs.cam.ac.uk) or Zarja Hude (zh366@cantab.ac.uk)
Zarja Hude
Zarja Hude is a PhD candidate at LSE, researching the intersection of law and data science. She previously worked at EY’s technology centre of excellence, focusing on generative AI applications in immigration. Zarja is a Senior Associate of the E-Lab.
Siiri Ruuhela
Siiri Ruuhela is a Master of Finance graduate from the University of Cambridge, with experience in building financial technology platforms for trading and lending applications. She works with early-stage projects focused on AI-based people management and decentralised technologies. Siiri is an Associate of the E-Lab.