We did it!
We’re still recovering from this year’s Mozilla Festival (“MozFest” for short), which wrapped up last week. The festival brought over 1400 participants together at Ravensbourne College in London for two and a half days of hacking, learning, and making. This year’s event was the largest yet, bridging nine floors, covering topics ranging from science to mobile, privacy to gaming.
The event was our first big introduction to the Mozilla community – a chance to unpack and explore “science on the web” in all its forms. For the first year MozFest had a dedicated track for science, chock full of sessions where participants could get their hands dirty, play with new tools, remix content and data, hack, build, and discuss issues surrounding open research.
For a full list of sessions, check out our planning etherpad here. We’ll also be teasing out track highlights over the coming weeks here on the blog.
“It’s about access, data, tools, education …” – Mitchell Baker, Mozilla
One of our main aims for the event was to unpack what “science on the web” or “open science” means – really break it down to the core components, build out resources for each of those areas, and craft clear call-to-actions following the event.
For us, this involves a number of components – access to knowledge, open data, code, tools, and digital literacy. The program for the science track reflected this diverse mix, with sessions poking at each of these issues, featuring some of main technologists, open science advocates and developers leading the way in this space.
We also hosted a fireside chat to discuss Mozilla’s broader plans for the Science Lab, featuring Josh Greenberg (program officer at the Sloan Foundation), Mark Surman (head of the Mozilla Foundation) and myself. You can read more about the session here in a post by Julie Gould of the Citizen Cyberlab. Also have a listen to this week’s Pod Delusion podcast, which features some awesome coverage of the science track at MozFest (thanks, Julie!).
On to what we made …
At MozFest, we try to stick to a “less yack, more hack” format as much as possible. Here are a few cool collaborations, resources and write-ups that came out of the event:
- A new platform using open data to better understand environmental conflicts, led by Mauricio Corbalan of GarageLab.
- Open-Timelapse Science teaching kit, from Paul Dille at Carnegie Mellon / CREATE Lab (based on their projects Timelapse and GigaPan).
- Interpret, troubleshoot and tag spectral data, a collaboration between Daniel Lombraña González (Crowdcrafting) and Jeffrey Warren (Public Lab), linking Public Lab’s Spectral Workbench API to the Crowdcrafting system.
- Map and track your collaborations with KnowNodes, a new tool created by Dor Garbash. Here’s our network for the #MozScience track.
- Tools for science on the web: Post by Billy Meinke (Creative Commons) on his 3-hour session looking at building out resources for tools and technology for digital research (jointly run with Michelle Brook of the Open Knowledge Foundation).
- Visualisations in the browser: Will Moore (Open Microscopy) and Amit Kapadia (Zooniverse) hacked together a volume rendering of DNA stains using an OME service and a Javascript volume rendering. (More on Amit’s work that led to this session here.)
- Recap of the “What makes good code good (for science)” session, led by Neil Chue Hong (Software Sustainability Institute).
- The Commons Machinery team discussed what was needed to build a sustainable sharing culture (and metrics) for science.
- What does Open Science mean to you? Hit the remix button on this make and add your thoughts. Be sure to tweet to #openscience #mozscience #mozfest. Thanks to Brian Glanz (Open Science Federation), Celya Gruson-Daniel (Hack Your PhD), and Dor Garbash (KnowNodes) for this Thimble template.
- Oh, and we also pushed live our Mozilla Science Lab website. (Note: it’s a work in progress.)
Many thanks again to our awesome facilitators and participants! We couldn’t have done it without you all.
What’s next?
We’ll be working to turn these outputs into resources. Want to help? Get in touch (/or join our mailing list)!
Also, our first community call is coming up on November 14 at 11 am ET. We’ll be joining forces with our Software Carpentry colleagues. Join us!