In May 2022, the Association for the BSV blockchain (Bitcoin Association) became the first blockchain company to partner with CSDN (Chinese Software Developer Network) to launch a Blockchain Engineer Qualification Programme – a course not only suitable for software engineers and developers, but also for college students and people from different backgrounds and industries who are looking for information about blockchain.
We spoke to Lise Li, CEO of Shanghai Keyi Technology Co., Ltd. (‘Keyi Tech’) about their collaboration with the BSV blockchain in this venture.
Blockchain courses and resources within the CSDN Engineer Qualification Programme
Overtime, the BSV blockchain’s contribution to CSDN will be a fully fledged qualification programme. To kick things off, the team launched a ‘Bitcoin Essentials: design and protocol’ course, as well as the BSV Wiki.
At present, Lise’s team is working on bringing the ‘Introduction to Blockchain Theory’ course to CSDN in late May. ‘Although the Intro to Bitcoin Theory course isn’t directly related to engineering, it provides a solid entry point for engineers to understand blockchain and learn how to develop on the BSV network,’ Lise explains.
Next on the agenda is to bring the introductory courses to blockchain development and blockchain infrastructure.
Blockchain resources for all those curious about Bitcoin and blockchain
‘The course is not only for engineers.’ Lise points out that the course and resources are structured to make sense for everyone, regardless of their industry and level of blockchain understanding. ‘CSDN is the biggest IT community platform in China, and its members extend far beyond developers – it’s for everyone who wants to learn about new technology. ’
CSDN’s knowledge base is also highly ranked on China’s search engine, Baidu. This means that when people search any technical term – from finance, accounting to medicine and blockchain – they are likely to find the answer here.
The platform’s wide readership makes it the ideal platform for hosting BSV’s wiki. Lise’s team ensures that the BSV Wiki entries are thoroughly vetted to maintain the highest level of reliability.
‘We’re positioning our Wiki as the Blockchain Bible. We want everyone, from software engineers to students, to be able to trust the BSV Wiki as the ultimate source of blockchain info,’ Lise declares.
To ensure the highest standards, Lise translates the content personally, getting help from engineers when necessary. ‘With so much misinformation about blockchain technology, we wanted to create a source that can start people off with the correct information from the start.’
CSDN’s reputability as vendor of technology education and talent hub
CSDN’s Engineer Qualification Programme is widely recognised in China’s tech industry. The Blockchain Engineer Programme created in collaboration with the BSV blockchain is one of several engineering branches from Systems Architecture, JavaScript engineer to Full Stack engineer.
CSDN also runs a big head hunting business, an HR agency that recruits specifically from the pool of talent that qualified via CSDN courses. The probability of future employment makes it particularly lucrative for students to enrol in their programmes.
Preparing to serve a propitious blockchain industry
Even though the blockchain industry is still relatively small compared to those like Internet, backend or front end engineers, CSDN foresees that blockchain technology will be widely adopted in the next 3 to 5 years.
‘Their strategy is to find and develop talent for the industry, and so they were looking for partners who could build out the Blockchain Engineer Qualification Programme with them,’ Lise reveals.
She ascribes CSDN’s consideration of partnering with the BSV blockchain partly to an existing relationship, where the two organisations have jointly hosted two DevCons over the past two years and BSV’s community zone hosted on CSDN for the same period. ‘The fact that we launched the BSV Academy already at the end of 2020 and have an existing curriculum made us the winning bid. So far, we are the CSDN’s only blockchain partner for launching a programme!’
The challenges of launching a blockchain certification programme in COVID-era Shanghai
Keyi tech is based in Shanghai where severe COVID restrictions have been in place for the past 3 months. Although the team were all working from home and in a different state from CSDN’s headquarters, the programme launched on time, a little over a year since the partners signed a strategic collaboration agreement.
Apart from translating the course curriculum’s text from the English-language BSV Academy, Lise comments on her team’s achievement of successfully developing and testing assessment mechanisms remotely. ‘Not only did we make sure that the texts were translated by our local team to ensure semantic accuracy, but we also localised the assessments to the academic methods that Chinese learners are familiar with.’
Early success indicates a thirst for reliable blockchain knowledge
With over 600 enrolments within the first week, prior to any promotional campaigns, Lise is confident of the demand for blockchain education in China. ‘Chinese platforms like CSDN require students to undergo KYC. You have to enrol with your WeChat or your cell phone number that can prove that you are a human being and true to your identity. While this adds a barrier of entry, many of our sign ups came from without CSDN’s user base.’
In the near term, the course will be expanded with video lessons to accommodate a wider range of learners. They will also be launching eBooks and blogs to introduce new people to the course, and will be announcing online lectures for college students.
For more information, follow Lise on Twitter.