Mozilla Festival 2012: building a generation of Webmakers (long version)

Gathering educators, youth, coders, gamers, media-makers and you!

This year's Mozilla Festival gathered more than 1000 passionate people with diverse backgrounds and skill-sets.

The goal: push the frontiers of the open web, learn together, and make things that can change the world. Coders, designers, journalists and educators joined with filmmakers, gamers, makers and youth from more than 40 different countries.

Together they participated in a series of design challenges, learning labs and fireside chats spread across four floors of the Ravensbourne design and media campus in East London.

Unlike traditional conferences, the emphasis at the Mozilla Festival is on hands-on making and collaboration — rather than passive consumption or listening to other people talk. It's "more hack, less yack."

And a big tent for everyone — including partners, local communities and you — who shares Mozilla's vision for a more open, web literate world.

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The Mozilla festival is an annual event.

Bringing together a 1000 developers, designers, educators,

journalist, people who are interested in promoting the open web.

And learning and hacking together .

There are different disciplines and cross disciplines to make the web a better place.

[music-]

Moz-Fez is were people come

to make the future of the web and so we got people here hacking together

software, hacking badges, hacking together new learning materials.

and there are a thousand of them

There is so many people they are all so friendly

I can say things, give my views on stuff the are working on

and they actually care what I think.

Walk up to strangers talk to them try something.

you haven't tried before.

get your hands dirty

I think people to Moz-fest with an idea of what they expect

and part of what they expect is they don't know what they are going to get.

And they know that there is a thing they want to do or a thing they want to make.

They also know they are going to be surprised by who they find and what they do.

It's like a years of education in one day.

Ultimately I think it's about

um turning the people who this year, who've been this year

the learner's the observers, and stuff

into next years teachers and makers.

[music]

You know I really like a high angle camera shot !

I would like to get up above the stage

all the balcony's are on this side

I cant get over here

so I brought a Blimp this year !

[music]

Are hope , after the Mozilla festival is

we have inspired. Future generations of Web Makers.

to realize they don't need permission

to realize they don't need anything other than passion,

and understanding that the only thing limiting their ability to make is their own imagination.

And Mozilla wants to help them .

make what ever they want to see made.

[music]

The key component of what we do is

openness and happieness !

So, I think as long as you are working in the open

bringing in other people into your work

sharing idea's, listening and having respect and doing it with joy.

then I (uh) your in a good spot and your a web maker.

[Music]

Moz-fest is about bringing innovation into

the way we think about the web.

we use the web every day.

we use the internet every day.

often times, great things appear, and we use them

But sometimes you want more or you want the ability to change something.

Or sometimes you think

WOW !

It would be nice to do X .

Moz-fest is a way of getting people together

who have an interest, and are comfortable

enough to try and say What would it be like ?

If I understood more ?

[music]

This festival is remarkable to me.

uhm, we've got a huge collection of people

who are working on every thing under the sun

as long as it is vaguely related to the net

the network effects you get something like

a worldwide internet that's open, that's is

easy to access.

You get huge collaboration when you start

doing things like that.

and for the most part it's all vollunteer

And it is amazing to watch a communite come together and do something

like this.

So the Mozilla festival has a kind of unique

(ah) value proposition. We are not

traditional conference. We are not here with

speakers on the stage and everyone sitting in a dark room.

All of the sessions are built on collaboration and hacking on real problems.

So our partners come here with a real problem set .

And people that come and hack on that problem set together.

And an interesting aspect of that is that

is not a problem that only these partners care about,

but it is something that helps the broader world.

So a journalistic organisation

doesn't just come and hack on their News Room,

They are hacking on new tool's and idea's that can actually be applied.

across news rooms and the journalistic as a whole.

[music]

The first you get in a group

and are trying to learn something about code.

or how to build an app or how to take a video

and actually add web based information to it

in real time. You know it all sounds intimidating

But that is what we are here for.

And it turns out if you take something about your life,

something that is important to you,

And you get a sence of what you can actually do with it . Then it's GREAT !