All posts tagged webmaker

Webmaker Train the Trainer

by thornet on May 17, 2013 in Mozilla with No comments

Back in March, we kicked off the first in hopefully a series of train-the-trainer (TTT) events for webmaking.

The idea is to run events that train people who go on to train others how to teach the web. We focused on practicing an open and participatory ethos, adapting lesson plans, and facilitating events.

This is a post to share what we did and encourage people in designing their own train-the-trainer events.

How to run a Webmaker Train the Trainer

Our prototype, the Reps Training Days, ran for four days in Athens, Greece with 40 Reps from around the world. The agenda was based on Laura Hilliger’s research and insights on successful TTT program and on Allen Gunn’s participatory event methodology. It was made possible by the amazing Mozilla Greek community.

Our participants were Mozilla Reps, a fantastic ambassador program with some of the most active and thoughtful Mozillians. Reps have been early adopters and innovators with Webmaker. They organized nearly 50 events during last year’s Summer Code Party and are leading the way in developing tools, tutorials, and localization for Webmaker. It seemed like a natural fit to run our first TTT with them.

1. Participate in a Webmaker event

The first day of Training Days was spent observing and participating in a Hive Pop-Up, organized by Hive Athens. This was an opportunity for the participants to experience a webmaker event firsthand, to see the tools and activities in action, to learn about the logistics, and to understand the vibe.

We then circled up to discuss what we saw. Participants shared their reflections on what worked well at the pop-up and what they would change if they did their own.

2. Build the training agenda

Then we opened up the training days properly. While we had topics in mind we wanted to hack on together, it was more important that everyone in the room thought about what they want to learn or discuss. So we had an agenda brainstorm.

To do this: we split into groups for 3 people. On post-it notes, we wrote down topics. 1 topic per post-it and the encouragement to write it as concretely as possible.

Then everyone pasted the notes on the wall. We read them all and then clustered them by themes. This collaborative board formed both critical event documentation as well as agenda fodder for the coming days.

3. Teach someone something

To warm up to the idea of teaching, we then got into pairs. The task: teach someone something in 5 minutes.

One person would go and then switch. Even if you knew what was being taught, you were encouraged to play a good learner, asking good questions and prompting the teacher.

After this exercise, we circled up and discussed what we observed from this experience. For many, it was a great way to think about how to explain something clearly, using metaphors and knowledge building blocks. It helped bring people into a teaching mindset.

4. Make a learner profile

Now that we’ve been thinking about teachers and learners, we made small groups and hacked together a learner’s profile.

This goal of this activity was to think about who our learners are. We used Webmaker tools to make these profiles, which was also a fun, maker-y way to be introduced to these tools. Participants were encouraged to think about real people they want to teach.

5. Hack an event invitation

After we’ve made our learner profiles, we thought about the kind of event we wanted to run. Most of the participants have already organized Webmaker events in the past, so there was already some familiarity with the format.

Nevertheless, it was helpful to hack together an event invitation. The idea was to think about your target learner and to make an invitation that would speak to them. Again, we used Webmaker tools to quickly pull these invitations together on the web.

6. Deep dive into lesson plans

With a learner profile, an event invitation and some familiarity with Webmaker tools, we then introduced the hackable kits. These are remixable lesson plans that help mentors, trainers, etc. to teach the web. The idea is that they are adaptable to different contexts and that people can share new ways of teaching in a shared format.

Participants poked around in the kits and asked questions. We also did some fun icebreakers so they could see the activities in action and get some energy going.

7. Playtest lesson plans

Now came the fun part. We had to plan for a real live event the next day. So participants got into groups of five with one group facilitator.

They had to design a four-hour agenda for local youth. Using three recommended activities from the kits, they adapted the lesson plans. Then they walked through a script for the next day, including having people role-play as learners. It was a lot of fun to see and a great way to prepare for the big day.

8. Put training to practice at a live event

So with some nervousness, we got ready for the live event. About a hundred youth were coming. We split into different rooms, each group of five trainers getting about 20 learners.

While there were the inevitable challenges (the internet is down! one kid won’t listen!), the Reps did a terrific job. They rolled with their scripts, adapting them as they saw what was working. They also taught well in smaller pairs with their learners, sometimes adding new challenges or tools to fit their needs.

It was a beautiful and fun thing to see. All the training the days before paid off: the youth had a lot of fun and so did we.

9. Reflect on event, lessons learned and where from here

We ended the event with a closing circle. We talked about what we saw that day, what worked well, what didn’t. We each shared one thing we appreciated about the experience, and what we’re excited about doing next.

With that, we headed out into the city to enjoy the day and the rest of our time together.

10. Go forth and teach!

Each participant left the Training Days with a local plan. It was a short list of possible collaborators in their hometown, a date for a small team huddle to bring those people together, and then a date for a larger Webmaker event to organize with their new collaborators.

We also started interest groups in topics like localization and offline tools. And now, a few months later, the participants from Training Days are now “Webmaker Super Mentors”, mentoring people in an online course to learn how to teach the web.

In the coming months, we hope to keep remixing and improving these agendas, as well as work with people who are interested in TTT in their own cities or communities.

Let us know if you’d like to get involved! #teachtheweb

#teachtheweb: An Online Course

by thornet on May 2, 2013 in Mozilla with No comments

Today we officially kicked off #teachtheweb, a massive open online course (“MOOC”) dedicated to helping people teach the web. It’s convening nearly 3,000 participants to share their practice, teaching materials and to learn and hack on the way.

A huge shout-out goes to Laura Hilliger, fellow MOOC conspirator, for her leadership and savvy to pull this together! And to the Webmaker Mentor team for the wisdom and support.

Here are a few lessons from the course worth highlighting so far.

The Makes

We’re firm believers that you learn best by making.

That’s why there’s no formal instruction or lecturing in this course. Instead, each week we share a prompt that you can respond to with a “make”.

To start, we invited participants to:

Introduce yourself Webmaker style by using Popcorn Maker, Thimble or the X-Ray Goggles and share your make with #teachtheweb.

Already there are loads of great hacks from the community. And in this way, people both learn how to use the tools and mess around with code, and they can also express themselves creatively while getting to know one another.

Check out some of them:

The Study Groups

The other thing about MOOCs is that they are massive. And fire-hose-y. There’s a lot of information on a lot of channels with a lot of people.

So one way we’re mitigating that is with study groups.

Groups are formed based on:

We also encourage people to organize physical meet-ups, so they can connect with fellow learners and build a local network.

And if they don’t see a group on a topic they care about, it’s all hackable. So they can go in and add one!

The Chatter

The communication channels of the MOOC can be quite overwhelming. We’re trying to meet people where they are, while also playing to the strengths of different tools.

So far, the most important channels are:

We made this diagram to help explain how the channels work together and definitely welcome feedback on how to improve them!

The Super Mentors

The people that really make this course run are the Webmaker Super Mentors.

These are passionate people experienced in teaching the web, running events and/or creating teaching materials.

The Super Mentors are:

It’s been so inspiring working with these 90+ Super Mentors so far. It feels like they’re really the heart and soul of Webmaker.

Keep Learning

As a MOOC facilitator, I’m really learning a lot about helping people online and encouraging learning & making. Simplification is key, as is emphasizing how the experience is flexible and adaptable to participants’ needs.

I’m also keen to learn from legendary MOOC facilitators like Philipp Schmidt and Mitch Resnick from MIT’s Learning Creative Learning and other online learning experiences like #etmooc.

If you’re interested in joining the #teachtheweb experiment, hop onto our G+ community and follow the #teachtheweb hashtag!

Making It in Brooklyn: Webmaker Mentor Team Make Week

by thornet on April 17, 2013 in Mozilla with No comments

This week the Webmaker Mentor team is meeting in Brooklyn, NYC to plot together.

Too often at team meetings there’s a lot of yakking and not much hacking. So we decided to run the week like scrum and focus all our tasks as clear “makes”, i.e. concrete things we can produce and ship.

Here’s our task board. Ooo! So many post-its.
IMAG2750 DSC00112

Big things lie ahead, so our mind meld this week is an effort to finalize plans and sort out details for how we’ll continue building the Mentor community. We’re offering training, developing new content, designing badges, and formalizing ways to make it easy for people to connect and to showcase the successes and inspiring stories that result.

Of course, conversations stray into other, more colorful topics. Like which Dungeons and Dragons characters we like to play (OH: “When I’m feeling sexy, I like to be an elf. When I’m realistic, I play a dwarf.”) Or an existential debate after seeing this near-endless scroll of all the people in the world.

We’ve also made great progress on planning our #teachtheweb MOOC. This online course kicks off May 2 and runs for 9 weeks. We’re hacking on the lesson plans, communications infrastructure and ways to make it easy and fun for people to participate and get ready for the big Maker Party 2013 campaign.

Two of us were also in Toronto helping Hive Toronto “make” the parameters of their project RFP and best ways forward about funding and building Hive projects in this emergent new Hive.

Today we are diving deeper into different ways to surface Webmaker and Hive projects as key engagement ramps for the Maker Party 2013 Campaign. Stay tuned on how this all shapes up, and if you’d like to get involved in these efforts, sign up at https://webmaker.org/en-US/teach/.

What we made so far:

  • A diagram of how to participate in the #teachtheweb MOOC (see below)
  • Updated the #teachtheweb MOOC site
  • Tightened messaging around the Maker Party 2013

Screen Shot 2013-04-17 at 12.15.01 PM

This article is cross-posted in “Explore, Create, Share.“

Teach the Web: MOOC, Party, and Beyond

by thornet on April 11, 2013 in Mozilla with No comments

Lots of great things brewing at the moment. I’d like to take a moment to tie them together and share the latest thinking from the Webmaker Mentor team and community.

An overview:

Leadership: Webmaker Super Mentors

There’s a fantastic group of people emerging as leaders of the Webmaker community. They are educators, techies, makers and other people passionate about teaching the web — and teaching others how to teach the web.

These “Super Mentors” have experience in:

  • advocating for web literacy
  • designing curriculum
  • running participatory events

And they teach all sorts of learners: students, friends + family, colleagues, strangers in a coffee shop — whomever!

Right now, we’re convening these Webmaker Super Mentors to design, moderate and lead an online training course for new Webmaker Mentors.

If you have experience like above and an interest in helping others become mentors, let us know!

Training: Opportunity for new Webmaker Mentors

We care about teaching the world the web. To further that cause, we’re convening an online training for learners to become Webmaker Mentors.

Participants will learn to hack teaching materials, plan events, and support one another. The course is aimed at people who want to teach the web but would like some guidance and community support to get started.

Under the banner “Teach the Web”, the course will be run online as an open, collaborative learning format. It takes its inspiration from “MOOCs”, massive open online courses. Check out Laura Hilliger’s great post on how that will work.

The course will run from May 2 – June 30, with the goal of 500+ learners teamed up with 50+ Super Mentors. The curriculum will be drafted by the Webmaker Super Mentors, integrating their insights and experiences teaching the web.

If you’re interested in participating in the Teach the Web MOOC, sign up here.

Party: Fun events around the globe for Webmakers

Following the training (aka party prep), we’ll kick off a distributed, global party.

Anyone interested in making cool things on the web is invited to join. The Super Mentors and newly prepped Mentors will lead with fun, participatory events in their cities. They’ll help surface great stories, support one another and learners, and in general be excellent party hosts.

Similar to our Summer Code Party last year, the Maker Party 2013 is a “big tent” campaign. That means that many organizations and networks that share our vision will be joining in.

From exciting announcements at the White House and 10 Downing Street, to energizing events in places like Tokyo, Buenos Aires, Nairobi, Mexico City, Jakarta and beyond, there will be a lot going on!

The party runs from June 15 – September 15.

If you’d like to partner in the campaign, host an event or just hack and party with us, sign up here.

Celebrate: Bring it all together at the Mozilla Festival

Then to bring all the fun, learning and great people together, we’re hosting the annual Mozilla Festival in London from October 25 – 27.

As Mozilla’s largest public-facing event, this is the perfect place to celebrate the community and to plan together how we want to start next year.

This year, we want to put a bigger focus on the growing Webmaker Mentor community. That means Super Mentors and activated Mentors from the MOOC, the Maker Party and elsewhere are encouraged to bring their best hacks, lesson plans, and ideas to share and build upon it together.

We’re hoping that people help identify great activities and submit them in a few months with the call for sessions goes live.

If you’d like to stay updated about the Mozilla Festival, sign up here!

Can’t wait!

It’s a really exciting time — and all these pieces seem to be coming together. A huge thanks to all the Super Mentors for the leadership to get us this far.

If you have feedback or questions about all of this, don’t hesitate to contact us!

You can use the hashtag #teachtheweb or jump into our G+ group.

Let’s teach the web together!

#teachtheweb

by thornet on March 17, 2013 in Mozilla with No comments

#teachtheweb

We’d like to try an experiment in a distributed “marketplace” for webmaking. The idea is simple: use the hashtag #teachtheweb to ask for and offer help.

Asking for Help

It works like this:

Say you’d like to organize a webmaking in your city, Athens. You’ve got a venue, you’ve got some learners, but you’re missing someone who can help you teach Javascript. You can use the #teachtheweb hashtag to ask for help:

“I’m looking for someone to help teach Javascript at a webmaking event in Athens. #teachtheweb”

A community is monitoring the tag, who can amplify the request or answer it themselves:

“I know someone who can help. @NAME knows Javascript. #teachtheweb”

“I can help! When’s the event? #teachtheweb.”

The hashtag isn’t just for events, either. It can be applied to anything that helps teach the web — with a focus on asking for and offering help on specific things.

Offering Help

In this way, you can also use the tag to share things that you can help with. You could say, for example:

“I work with youth at my hackerspace and am happy to share activities they like. #teachtheweb”

“I speak Spanish and would love to help translate learning materials about webmaking. #teachtheweb”

“I’ve run a hive Pop-Up in my city and can help coach new organizers. #teachtheweb”

Betatesting

Since this is an experiment, we can’t anticipate how well the tag will work.

But the hope is that with some decent traffic and an active group of people monitoring it, the hashtag will be a simple yet powerful way to connect Webmaker Mentors and others who care about teaching the web.

We encourage you to give it a try and to let us know what you think! If you’re interested in helping monitor and field requests, please dive in and start replying. You can also check out our newly launched webmaker.org/teach for more resources and ways to connect.

If you successfully team up with someone, tell the world about it: #webmakerwin!

Webmaker Mentors in 2013

by thornet on February 11, 2013 in Mozilla with 4 Comments

An inflection point

We’re at an inflection point with learning and making. What was once simmering quietly in makerspaces and classrooms is now boiling. Makers and mentors, and all sorts of hackers and radical educators in between, are the key players.

The maker movement, iconized by MAKE: Magazine but is much deeper and broader than that, has hit mainstream. Hundreds of thousands of people show up at Maker Faires, and contributions to sites like Instructables and Youtube tutorial videos are innumerable. Toy stores sell kits, and anyone from a scout to a senior citizen can take a workshop at their skill level. Makers bootstrap, and they hack. These are people with a DIY ethic and an affinity to sharing what they made and how they made it.

There’s also another movement reaching critical mass: a learning movement. It’s teachers, educators, museum curators, after school coaches – in short, mentors who cop a DIY attitude towards learning. Similar to the maker movement, they care about tinkering and interest-driven projects. They care about making, not rote memorization or other staid pedagogies of the past. They blend online and offline experiences, they focus on peer learning, and they are challenging traditional educational institutions with new modes of assessment and accreditation.

These two groups, the makers and the mentors, are coming together. And they’re creating a smart grid for learning. If it all goes well, it will shake up education, it will shake up employment, and it will shake up the way we see and tinker with the world.

Why mentors

At Mozilla, we believe that people learn best with others and that mentoring is a powerful, distributed way to connect learners with instructors.

By social learning, we mean that learning happens effectively through social interaction among peers. It’s learning that has an impact beyond an individual and become part of the larger society or community, in response to interactions with the community.

By mentoring, we mean peer support and encouragement where someone helps another person learn or make something, and also to understand that effort in a larger context. Mentoring is social and open-ended, and it’s certainly not just a one-way transfer of knowledge. We think a focus on mentoring is important, as it provides ongoing relationships for learners and a way to foster not only “hard” web skills like learning code but also the social ones like collaboration or working in the open.

Why Mozilla

Mozilla is a community that practices learning by making. We’ve got an ethos of less yak, more hack, and of helping people hack on things they care about. We don’t believe in “one-size-fits-all” and instead encourage a playful approach to the web and the world. Peers are a critical part of the effort, and not only for Webmaker but across Mozilla in projects like Firefox and FirefoxOS. Merit and peer recognition mean more than titles.

We’re not doing this alone — it’s a huge, distributed collaboration across many organizations and individuals. A “big tent”, as we like to call it. From kitchen tables and small code clubs to edgy museums and international bodies, we see this as a group effort where many players have a role.

With experience in “big tent” models like the Hive Learning Networks (city labs where organizations cluster to share learning offerings and resources) and the Summer Code Party (a campaign to teach webmaking anywhere), we’re excited to take this ethos to the next level.

What we’re going to do

The mentoring team at Mozilla will megazord two existing teams and add some amazing new folks:

  • Hive New York: Chris Lawrence, Lainie Decoursy and Leah Gilliam
  • Curriculum Hacker: Laura Hilliger
  • Events/Mozfest: Michelle Thorne
  • Hive Toronto: Kathryn Meisner
  • Reps Liaison: Sayak Sarkar

This group will operate like a skunkworks incubator for radical ideas about learning, webmaking and mentoring.

We’ll run webmaking campaigns, train the trainer workshops, and other activities that grow the mentor community. This includes launching an international campaign rallying around the theme “Making as learning”.

We’ll bring new Hive learning networks online. The goal is to mobilize local communities and network them globally.

These efforts will be powered by platforms and social protocols for people to gather and teach skills for a digital age. We aspire to build a Github for Learning Stuff, an open repository where mentors can rip, remix and repost materials.

We’re dedicated to documentation and on-boarding new mentors, so many processes will be easily replicable, remixable and teachable. We want to celebrate the community at Mozfest and set the stage for 2014.

These milestones come from conversations with community members (thank you!), and we tried to roll that input into an action plan and share it back with you.

Roadmap in Detail

Here are our 2013 goals:

  • Grow a global community of mentors with a maker attitude
  • Offer compelling on-ramps for mentors to participate in webmaking
  • Merge Hive + Code Party to create a global mentor community w/ local roots
  • Make it easier to find local mentors, events, and learning resources online
  • Create more + better mentor resources: step by step guides for teaching that are hackable
  • Surface localization opportunities. Tools and starter content should all eventually be translatable for different communities.

What success looks like:

More detailed roadmap.

Get involved

  • Tweet #mozhelp. The fastest and easiest way to get help and connect with other mentors. Tweet an offer or a request for help. “I can teach Javascript in Athens. #mozhelp” or “I need a venue for a webmaking event in London. #mozhelp”.
  • Join the Webmaker mailing list. Connect with others mentors, ask questions, and find out what other mentors are up to. Introduce yourself.
  • Live chat. Pop into the #webmaker public chat room to say hello or ask questions.
  • Share and build with us. Contribute back your own learning resources, remixes and more.

We warmly welcome your feedback on the Webmaking mailing list or in the comments to this post.

Can’t wait to kick off this work with you!

– The Mentor Community team: Laura, Lainie, Leah, Kathryn, Michelle, Sayak, Chris

Localizing Mozilla’s Thimble

by thornet on February 8, 2013 in Mozilla with 1 Comment

Localization is such an important factor in accessibility and inclusion. Thrilled by Atul’s leadership in making Thimble localization a reality!

Here’s how it works:

Get Started

Translating

  • Select with “fc/nls/ui”. It’s the most widely visible set of translation strings and therefore the highest priority.
  • If starting a new language, click “Add translation.” Enter the language you’re translating into. Then click “Translate online.”
  • If you don’t have access to steady bandwidth or want to work on the translation for several sessions, you may wish instead to “Upload file”, which is more complicated.
  • If you are reviewing or adding to an existing translation, click on the language and select “Translate now”.
  • Go through the strings with your best translation. If you’re confused about the context of a string, click “details” in the web interface to see if there’s a comment that helps explain it better.
  • Note: Some strings contain code snippets. Please preserve these and translate only natural words.
  • When you’re done, don’t forget to save. If you’re working offline, you can upload your file now.

Preview

  • After saving/uploading, you can preview your changes.
  • In the “locale” selector at the top-left of the page, select the language you localized.
  • You can also help by reviewing and proofreading other languages.

That’s it! Keen to hear what you think.

Mozfest 2012: The Aftermath Report

by thornet on January 6, 2013 in Mozilla with 3 Comments

About

The Mozilla Festival (#mozfest) is an annual read/write event for anyone interested in learning about – and making – the future of the web.

It is an unique platform for bringing together key contributors to discuss, hack on and teach the open web using Mozilla tools and beyond. The goal is to celebrate the Webmaker community and jumpstart initiatives for the coming year.

The Mozilla Festival program is designed to reflect the values of Mozilla. Participants hack and learn in small, decentralized groups. Sessions focus on solving real problems and teaching applicable skills. The schedule is always evolving in response to participants’ interests. Everything is hands-on, hackable, and collaborative.

“The most inclusive, constructive geek event ever!”
— Tony Parkin, former head of ICT development at the Specialist Schools & Academies Trust

Why It Matters

1. Make things with the tools Mozilla and others are creating. With 22 sessions dedicated to Mozilla tools, the Webmaker suite was introduced to and built-upon by Mozfest participants. Importantly, this year we introduced the “Webmaker Bar”, a dedicated playtesting zone for sharing our tools, inviting feedback and encouraging people to make new projects and features. Furthermore, we successfully explored how our tools can mash with others, such as the “Scratch Meets Thimble” prototype built by the MIT Media Lab.

2. Learn who is building what, how we can share and help each other. 187 facilitators shared their knowledge and toolsets in the sessions they ran. Coordination calls and a “facilitator bootcamp” before the festival improved session quality and also an understanding of what people are building and how we might work together. Also, the opening Science Fair exhibited 35 projects we curated for their notable contributions to making, freedom and the web. Promising collaborations await with organizations such as the MIT Media Lab, the National Writing Project, CERN, Internet Archive, Craftyy, GoCodery, and many more.

3. Design the things we want to build next, especially for mobile. Mozfest concluded with a demo party of over 30 prototypes hacked over the weekend. We made progress on two new verticals: mobile and games, and tested another key feature: Thimble with Javascript. For example, the games track helped the Game On Competition find local champions and jury members and produced a buzz around hackable games.

4. Fuel leaders who want to invent, teach and organize. The Hacktivate Learning track at Mozfest focused on fostering future leaders and co-designing teaching resources. Planning sessions were held with community members to design next year’s Summer Cody Party and the growth of the global Hive network.

5. Move the needle in the UK’s conversation about web literacy. Out of 295 press hits, 35 were strongly favorable articles (in comparison to 11 in 2011). 23 of the total hits were from the UK. We specifically set out to highlight our work in the UK and opportunities there, including announcing our web literacy campaign with NESTA, Nominet Trust and Telefonica. Hive London received a boost through further networking and a growing number of interested institutions, such as the Tate Collective, who also ran activities at Mozfest.

“[My professor] insisted that I attend the Mozilla Festival in London. This was probably the best advice I have ever received in my time at University & will likely impact my future greatly.”
— Finlay Craig, design student from Scotland

Themes

The motto was “Making, Freedom and the Web”. We curated 9 thematic tracks over 9 floors at Ravensbourne, a wired media and design college in London.

“Building Webmaker Together” not pictured.

Floor Plan

“By the end of my first session, I was sold on MozFest’s participation approach and not nearly as nervous about my ability to contribute.”
— Ryan Graff, Knight News Innovation Lab

What we made

Each theme was curated by at least one Mozilla employee (“space wrangler”) to tie organizational objectives to session outcomes. Some themes had very specific goals (i.e. user-test Webmaker tools and build new learning projects with them), while others were more exploratory (i.e. paper prototype early-stage mobile webmaking experiences). The space wranglers were very effective and key to the success of the overall event.

The best prototypes were demoed at a closing party.

Fuller documentation is available for each session, including more prototypes and code.

What we launched

The Mozilla Festival is an opportune moment to present strategic partnerships and launch milestone software. Videos.

This year we announced:

  • Popcorn Maker 1.0
  • Webmaker Badges
  • OpenNews 2013 Fellows
  • First steps in Hackable Games
  • Web literacy partnership in the UK

“Ultimately, I think [Mozfest] is about turning the people who have this year been the observers and learners into next year’s teachers and makers.”
— Joe Dytrych, CodeCards inventor

Who came

Participants at the Mozilla Festival hailed from over 48 countries. 52% of the participants came from the UK. 21% of the participants were 18 and under.

They represented a range of industries: education, gaming, journalism, filmmaking, technology, design, and more.

Content partners included: Nesta, Nominet Trust, MIT Media Lab, Telefonica, Knight Foundation, Sloan Foundation, Internet Archive, US Department of Energy, The Guardian, Chicago Tribune, La Nacion, New York Times, Boston Globe, BBC, Spiegel, ZEIT Online, NPR, WNYC, DIY.org, Goldsmiths University, Dundee University, Ravensbourne College, Imperial College, CDOT, Google, BlackGirlsCode, Mozilla Reps, WebFWD, Creative Commons, P2PU, Shuttleworth Foundation, CERN, National Writing Project, Hive NYC and Hive Chicago, CodeClub, GoCodery, Decoded, TinkerCAD, LA Makerspace, Open Knowledge Foundation, Craftyy, Mind Candy, Eyebeam, Tate, London Zoo, Web Foundation, Zeega.

How it worked

1. The Program

  • Science Fair: an evening opening party with drinks and demos. Participants get to know one another and play with demos of 30+ interesting projects around this year’s theme.
  • Opening Circle: the first plenary of the festival where all the participants gather for welcoming remarks and orientation about the event.
  • Sessions: participants break into 25+ concurrent sessions across the building. Sessions are based on three formats: i. Fireside Chat – a round-table conversation for 1hr; ii. Learning Lab – a skill-based workshop for 1hr; and iii. Design Challenge – a mini hackathon for 3hr.
  • Evening Keynotes: participants meet back in plenary for inspirational talks, announcements, and demos of what’s been made so far.
  • Party: a fun way to wind down and meet more people.
  • Second Opening Circle: Reconvene the next morning in plenary for a short pep talk and preview of the day.
  • Sessions: Continued program. Focus is put on shipping a demo for the evening.
  • Closing Demo Party: Returning to the Science Fair format, participants meet again for drinks and demos, this time showcasing what was made during the festival. Ends the event with acknowledgements and celebration.

2. The Facilitators

Sessions are curated through i. an open submission process and ii. strategic planning with staff and partners. This year there were 120+ submissions through the open process. Notable drivers of submissions were: the Summer Code Party, program like OpenNews, MozPubs (community meet-ups in the London office), and new themes that caught people’s interest (hackable games, mobile webmaking, coding for teens and making the web physical).

Facilitators of these sessions prepared a lot with the festival team. Over 80 individual conversations were held in preparation for Mozfest, discussing the facilitators’ goals, interests and agendas. These calls certainly led to improved readiness, higher quality sessions and better relationships to Mozilla and other facilitators.

Equally important is the half-day “facilitator “boot camp” held on-site before the festival. This year over 130 facilitators attended the boot camp – our highest number yet.

The Space Wranglers, as mentioned earlier, curated each of the festival themes. They were Mozilla staff members who could tie organizational objectives to session outcomes, and they were also instrumental in the success of individual sessions and the larger festival narrative.

3. The Team

The core team:

  • Michelle Thorne — Festival Lead
  • Allen “Gunner” Gunn — Participation Architect and MC
  • Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino — Local Producer
  • Diana Proca — Volunteer Coordinator
  • William Duyck — Mozilla Reps Coordinator
  • John Bevan — Learning Partnership Lead
  • Tim Hwang — Keynote Curator
  • Matt Thompson — Storyteller
  • Barbara Hueppe — Press
  • Geoffrey MacDougall — Partnerships

A huge advantage to this year’s was working with a veteran team. Nearly all the core team members were involved in 2011, and learned how to work well together and how the festival ticks.

Volunteers also play a critical role on-site. We organized two volunteer briefings prior to Mozfest and recruited not only from the Mozilla community, but also local students studying event management, which worked out very well.

On-site we also benefited greatly from:

  • Info Desk Coordinator, Aspiration Tech’s Jessica Steimer
  • Registration Coordinator, Mari Moreshead
  • Stage Manager, Ben Simon (next year we should assign this role much earlier)
  • Community Storytelling team, led by Matt Thompson and Rebeccah Mullen

4. The Space

The event is hosted at Ravenbourne, a wired media and design college near the O2 in East London. Ravensbourne is a very fitting setting for Mozfest, both as an academic institution and as a collaborative space.

We partnered with the web media department to complete three levels of student projects: i. web magazine about Mozfest themes using WordPress; ii. coverage about Mozfest using web video; and iii. hackable learning games.

The space itself spans 9 floors, all laid out for real-time configuration. Almost all furniture is on wheels, so rooms are easy to adjust depending on the session and activity. There are open atria with a lot of daylight and nooks for conversations and hacking.

This year we also got clearance to allow children of any age in the building. Nevertheless, children under 15 had to be accompanied by a guardian, which limited some registrations and movement in the building. Our ”’day care services”’ were welcomed, although under utilized due to lack of advertising them.

“It was as if one of our finest school architects had thought, ‘I have a great idea for a festival venue which we could use as a school between festivals.’”
— Tony Parkin, former head of ICT development at the Specialist Schools & Academies Trust

5. The Tech

The technology at Ravensbourne is state-of-the-art and the staff has been a great ally of the event.

The Mozfest website was simple but effective. The website used a customized them of WordPress, which worked well for the team to edit. However, we’ve push its features to the limit, especially regarding importing session data. Next year we should investigate whether WordPress fully meets our needs or whether we need to rethink the data import.

The schedule and documentation ran on Lanyrd. It’s the first time we’ve used it at this scale, and in general, it seems to have worked okay. Lots of assets have been added to Lanyrd pages and the microformats make for easy data clean-up.

During the festival, people seemed to navigate the Lanyrd schedule adequately, but two things to improve: i. set up an automatic refreshes of the schedule page rather than doing it manually and ii. improve the process for hacking the schedule. While several participants proposed new sessions and otherwise edited the schedule, the process for doing so was not clearly communicated nor supported fully on the scheduling site.

Next Year: Recommendations

All in all, the energy and feedback from the event indicates that it was a success. Of course there are many adjustments to make, but wrapping up our third festival, it feels like we’re hitting a stride.

It will be interesting to explore how the model evolves in the coming year. Some recommendations:

1. Release cycles. Many releases and announcements were tied to the Mozfest milestone (i.e. Popcorn Maker 1.0, Webmaker badges in Thimble, etc.). In the lead-up to Mozfest, there a lot of pressure on the staff to finish their releases. One way to mitigate the stress and fatigue would be to release further in advance of Mozfest. We should still announce major offerings at Mozfest, as it’s a great publicity platform, but the additional time buffer between release and event would allow for more testing and calmer nerves.

2. Length. It should also be discussed whether 2.5 days is the right amount of time for Mozfest. It’s worked well so far, but numerous participants said they wished they had had more time. Other agendas could be considered to lengthen the event, which might lead to closer connections among participants and more prototypes.

3. Logistics. The current festival team handled 1000 participants this year, but if our intention is to grow the size of Mozfest, we must look into new ways of running event logistics. We’ll have to beef up the festival team to manage more people and all that goes with it: venue, travel, catering, setup, AV support, and more.

4. Regional activities. As the global Webmaker community grows, it’s increasingly costly to bring all of our key contributors to one place. Also, focusing on one city means missing opportunities in others. A possible avenue to explore is to continue hosting the large Mozfest in London in 2013 but explore smaller Mini Mozfests in other regions. These would be smaller in size and budget, and if timed before Mozfest 2013, they can work as feeder events for local talent to bring to London. Particularly we can tie these into the Summer Code Party.

5. Community space wranglers. Another way to boost local talent is to scout for and foster community space wranglers. In a similar way that space wranglers at Mozfest 2012 curated tracks, we should explicitly support local leaders to not only run sessions but curate a range of activities. After a few rounds of input and local testing, these community space wranglers could bring their teams to Mozfest 2013 for an even bigger impact and a global celebration.

#mozfest

Web(maker) Lab

by thornet on October 29, 2012 in Mozilla with 2 Comments

This weekend we checked out the Chrome Web Lab in the London Science Museum.

It’s the first time I’ve seen a major museum host an interactive exhibit on the wonder of the web. As we wove through throngs of kids drooling over display cases as web-powered robots drew in sand, it made me realize what an amazing learning opportunity an exhibit like this is.

The Web Lab features five different stations, each a playful interaction of machines, haptic interfaces, and occasional online users.

But while I enjoyed getting my portrait drawn by robots and playing instruments with virtual friends, the Web Lab fell short of exposing the real “magic” behind all its wonders: the web itself.

Beneath all of the chrome, the only time you could glimpse any code was when a staff member had to reboot a machine.

Which got me thinking: how would you design an exhibit that put the web on display and let you play with code in a fun, accessible way?

An Exhibit for Webmaking

This is certainly not an exhaustive list, but here are some ideas for a webmaker exhibit:

  • Hackability. Much of the Web Lab seemed predetermined, or at least quite limited in its variables. A webmaker exhibit would invite the unexpected and encourage playful appropriation. Perhaps it could provide a glossary of HTML tags that you could use throughout the exhibit, and prompts for how the tags can be recombined to create new commands and attributes.
  • Interoperable activities. The stations would be interoperable, so something you made in one activity would transfer over to the other and let you keep adding to it. That way, you see how the pieces fit together.
  • Real code. You’d definitely get to manipulate real code. Maybe it’d use an interface like Joe’s CodeCards to invite users to shuffle syntax and run neat, short programs.
  • Design. The team behind the Chrome Web Lab did a brilliant job with a coherent visual concept, a clear path through the space, and gorgeous fiducial markers on name tags so you could save your work and play with it when you got home. Having a consistent user experience and an attractive design goes a long way, letting visitors focus more on what they’re trying to build rather than how to navigate the space.
  • Interest-driven. The Web Lab gave a lot of presets, which is smart in an exhibit where you just want things to work and to be inoffensive. But their stations didn’t allow for interest-driven personalization. So for example, in an image search activity, you could only select from a prepared list of ca. 20 images. While it’d be riskier, it’d also be more interesting to allow custom searches. Or just more activities that let you play with real content from the web.

It was definitely a pleasure to see the Chrome Web Lab, and together with the Exquisite Forrest exhibit at the Tate Modern, Google is making a smart move to be present in heavily visited museums in London. I’d argue there’s an opportunity to complement these exhibits with more activities that emphasize making and hacking, while still being durable and appropriate enough for thousands of visitors.

Photos: Chrome Web Lab / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 and Andrew Meredith

Webmaker Special Interest Group for Reps

by thornet on October 14, 2012 in Mozilla with 4 Comments

I’d like to share some thoughts on a “Webmaker Special Interest Group” for the Mozilla Reps program.

This conversation owes a lot to many Reps and Webmakers so far; in particular, a huge thanks to Henrik Mitsch, William Quiviger, and Pierros Papadeas for supporting the idea and for your thoughts to propelling it forward.

What is a Special Interest Group (SIG)?

Firstly, what is this SIG jargon?

A Special Interest Group is a group within the Mozilla Reps program that has a particular interest in a specific area of the Mozilla project. These groups are created to help Reps to sharpen specific skills and work more closely with Mozilla staff responsible for those projects. SIGs are also key drives of participation and new volunteer opportunities.

Currently, Mozilla Reps has 10 SIGs. A very successful one is the Evangelism SIG, mentored by Christian Heilmann and Shezmeen Prasad. It skills up Reps as public speakers and open web evangelists. This SIG offers a number of valuable things, including in-person trainings, mentorship, toolkits, budgets, and events.

How did the Webmaker SIG conversation start?

1. Summer Code Party participation

One of the strongest indications towards a Webmaker SIG was the amazing leadership and participation by Reps during the Summer Code Party. We recently ran an event campaign, encouraging people to grab their friends and a laptop and hack together over the summer. 44 Reps organized events, and they were by far and away some of the most inspiring and impressive events around the globe. From Argentina to Switzerland, Romania, India, the Philippines, Kenya, Nigeria, and beyond, Reps led the way with some of the best documentation and turnouts at Summer Code Parties.

What’s more, they were also involved in shaping the campaign from the beginning, betatesting the event formats and even building Thimble projects (thanks, Fuzzy, for the zombies!). It was clear from #mozparty that Reps operate at a profound level of participation, knowledge and willingness to experiment.

2. Conversations with Reps

Building on the momentum from the Summer Code Party, a number of us on the Webmaker team chated with Reps about the ways to weave together the ReMo program with Webmaker projects and methods.

Some of these ideas were shared on the Webmaker and Reps-General mailing list, and other came about on community calls or quick IRC chats. The ReMoCamp2012 kindly invited me to discuss the latest Webmaker initiatives and invite Reps to get involved.

3. Mozcamp Europe session

From there, it seemed there was enough general interest from the Reps community to pursue the Webmaker SIG more fully.

We put in a proposal at Mozcamp Europe to run a session with Reps to hear about what they want out of this program and how it could take shape.

About 40 Reps joined in the conversation, with many more saying online they’d participate if they had been in Warsaw. The feedback was incredibly positive.

Most Promising Opportunities

This is a summary from our Mozcamp Europe session. You can check out the full notes on the etherpad and add to them.

1. Mentorship

  • Lead peer learning and mentoring, including teaching people how to run Webmaker events. A great example of this is Mozilla Rep Gauthamraj from Erode, India who’s teaching a young webmaker to how to hack the web and even organize her own events with friends.
  • Organize outreach and trainings, especially for local schools and instructors. Design local learning campaigns tailored to their area. We can see some great beginnings to this approach, led by Reps in Pune, India and Victoria, Canada.
  • Online support for anyone running events and using Webmaker projects.

2. Documentation

  • Write, improve and localize documentation for people learning the web. This could perhaps build upon the newly launched Web Platform Docs, adapting it to make accessible for beginners. There’s also the excellent Mozilla Developer Network (MDN) full of documentation which could be extended, simplified and otherwise customized for webmaking.
  • Spearhead the Webmaker localization process and infrastructure. At the moment, Webmaker is very weak on localization. We know this is one of the most important things to get right, and Reps could really help us learn how to set up the right processes and tools to make it sustainable and effective.
  • Craft new learning missions. These could be built on existing Mozilla tools, like Thimble and Popcorn Maker, or even around other great learning tools, like App Inventor.

3. Code

  • Push innovation on the edges. As Henrik Mitsch described it, Reps are also in a perfect position to explore “Grenzwissenschaften”, the science on the edges. As skilled web developers who think creatively and with the community in mind, Reps can lead the way with code contributions. This could be coding directly with tools like Popcorn.js, OpenNews’ Source, Thimble, etc. or shaping new things.
  • Collaborate with coder communities. Reps are often well-networked with local and global developer communities. It’s a great opportunity to hack with these broader groups and innovate together around projects that teach and push the web forward.
  • Identify and hack on much-needed features. There are loads of features we’d love to ship. Having Reps help identify, design and develop these features would be a huge win. Offline Thimble, anyone?

Open Questions

I think these three categories, mentorship, documentation and code are very useful to start thinking of how to structure a Webmaker SIG to foster contribution in these areas.

To move forward, there are still a few open questions. We should tackle them on the mailing lists and IRC.

  • Membership criteria. Do you have to be a Rep to join the Webmaker SIG? Some SIGs are open to non-Reps, which is a powerful way to recruit new people who may not have heard about the Reps program before. On the other hand, there are huge benefits to working more concertedly with Reps, since the ReMo “standard operating procedures” (SOPs) ensure a level of quality and impact. What do you think? Should members of the Webmaker SIG be Reps?

  • Target instructors. The Webmaker program is looking at three instructor types. Which ones fit as target for Reps to focus on? i) Already teaching “web making”; ii) Already teaching, maybe not web making. (eg: camp instructor); iii) Second-generation teachers: people we could teach how to teach, and then they might. (ie: the learners becoming the teachers); iv) Other?

  • Coordination. Some SIGs have staff dedicating a good amount of time developing their programs. What’s the ideal scope of a staffer’s involvement, and what sort of time commitment would it require? This is an important resourcing question for the Mozilla Foundation, and by knowing how much time is needed and by whom, it could help push the SIG forward, quickly and effectively. What have you learned about the staff’s role in the other SIGs and how would you see a staffer/staffers contributing to the Webmaker SIG?

What Next?

I hope this has been a useful summary.

It’s a mad time at the moment because of Mozfest, but here’s a proposal for next steps. It’s all hackable, so please chime in.

  • Share proposal on Tuesday, October 23 on the Webmaker community call. Cross-post to the Reps-general list for discussion.
  • Start fortnightly IRC meetings with anyone interested in developing the proposal. These can kick off on October 30, one week after the community call.
  • Fine-tune the SIG in-person at Mozfest and Mozcamp Asia.

Keen to hear your thoughts! ^_^

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