The Mozilla Festival, or “MozFest” for short, will take place in London, UK – October 27-29th and the call for proposals is up and running. Now is your chance to propose a session in one of our five main event spaces, aligned with our 2017 Internet Health Report!
Ravensbourne is home to Mozfest 2017 – 9 floors of magical maker space
Earlier this year, we announced Mozilla’s focus on five key issues affecting Internet Health: Decentralization, Privacy & Security, Open Innovation, Web Literacy, and Digital Inclusion. For Mozfest 2017, the Science Lab is co-hosting the Open Innovation space and we’re looking for participants from around the world to join us in working on projects that further open innovation in all of its permutations. This includes open science, open data, as well as open practices around research and the web as a global public resource for all; and we welcome session proposals on all of these topics.
There’s a huge team behind the Mozfest Planning process, eager to read/mentor your proposals
What is Mozfest?
MozFest is where many of Mozilla’s best and most innovative ideas come from, bringing together over 1,700+ inventors, hackers, creatives, researchers, activists and digital citizens to share ideas and explore how we can forge the future of the web together. We’d love to have you help us shape the Open Innovation program.
Who’s invited to Mozfest? Everyone passionate about the open web!
We’re particularly looking for sessions that show how the Web can help researchers, developers, and librarians explore, remix, and hack at the intersection of science, data, policy and the Internet. Open Innovation is a space for challenging and learning about open source, open projects and growth on the web. We’ll investigate the challenges to open production (misinformation, draconian copyright) and the values of open creativity (working open techniques, tools and tactical transparency). The space is programmed as a highly-interactive platform for producing and protecting the principles of the open web.
MozFest is not your typical conference – sessions are designed to be participatory, hands-on, multilingual and collaborative.
Did you know that we accept session proposals in multiple languages? Sí/Oui/Ja..
We’ll be soliciting proposals for the following session formats, anywhere from 45-90 minutes in duration:
- Learning Forum – for listening, learning and discussing individual topics. Sessions here develop and implement ideas for improvement, exchange or review. For ideas, check out the projects listed on our current site, or projects recruited for this year’s Global Sprint; these types of projects are all eligible as Mozfest session submission topics.
- Gallery – contains interactive exhibits, installations, games, stalls designed for 1:1 self-driven experience and emergent activities. Often these experiences or activities are not scheduled time blocks but take place over the day or weekend allowing access and interaction at any time. The Gallery can provide context for upcoming sessions, and finished prototypes from sessions for that relevant Space.
- Shed – for hands-on making, hacking and prototyping. Sessions in the Shed require attendees to create and build code, objects or crafts
Mozfest is a mutable space, that accommodates a range of session types and age groups
What makes for a good proposal ?
Sessions that are hands-on, educational and encourage collaboration in terms of not only the content but the groups involved, and that bring together a diverse set of partners. Keep in mind, we’ll have an entire building full of educators, librarians, data experts from journalism to research to programming and more. Think about how you can craft a session idea that could appeal to and utilize that collective brainpower. Your creativity, expertise, and contribution to the open web will not only benefit the Mozfest community, it will enhance your leadership skills.
Open Innovation Space initial planning!
Here are a few ideas to get the creative juices flowing:
- Pursuing Progressive Policy Change: What are some of the blockers to open data/science/source policy in institutions and governmental agencies, how can we brainstorm ways to move beyond these limitations?
- Campaigning for Open: Have a campaign idea for open data or open science or anything that innovates on the principles of an open web? Share it with us
- Citizen science and crowdsourcing: From LHC@Home and Zooniverse to crowdfunding, how can we use the web to make research more accessible and use the wisdom of the crowd?
- Empowering community leaders: What form does mentorship take to further open practice in science? Help us build pathways for open leadership and community engagement to help lower barriers to entry and build momentum around open innovation.
- Training for Open Science: Hands-on training for data or tools to help us better equip our communities of open practice.
We’re here to help !
Curious about what Mozfest looks like, check out our Flickr Archive of previous Mozfestivals!
Have an idea you’d like to propose? Need some inspiration or a sounding board? We’ll be hosting “Ask Me Anything” (AMA) sessions 2PM EDT Thursdays in July to give you a hand. The first AMA will take place Thursday July 20. We’ll be answering any and all of your questions. Please join us if you need a hand.
Be sure to get your proposals in before August 01 @ 21:00 UTC. We’d love to have you join us for this year’s event !