Festival2012/Submit

Mozilla Festival 2012: Submit a Proposal

A yearly festival with hundreds of passionate people

Making, Freedom and the Web
November 9 - 11, 2012 | #mozfest
London, UK | Ravensbourne College

This document will explain how the Mozilla Festival works and you can propose activities.

Table of Contents

1. What is the Mozilla Festival?
2. What makes a good Mozilla Festival session?
3. 3 event formats
4. How to propose a session

What is the Mozilla Festival?

The Mozilla Festival is a yearly celebration with hundreds of passionate people exploring the web, learning together, and making things that can change the world.

We’re replacing darkened lecture halls with nine floors of maker labs bursting with people building and teaching the web in realtime.

To make this work, we need people of all different skills and persuasions. From journalists to filmmakers, educators to gamers, kids and designers and web developers and everything in between — we'll all be jamming together.

The Mozilla Festival will take place November 9 - 11, 2012 in London, UK with over 800 participants.

What makes a good session?

A good session has:

• A clear purpose and desired outcome
• A clear call for who can/should participate
• A description of how it will transpire

Good sessions are:

• Participatory from the beginning, engaging and activating participants early and getting them making and doing rather than listening and watching
• Purposeful: working on meaningful activities toward meaningful outputs
• Productive: Well scoped so that concrete outcomes are achieved in the allotted time and participants feel time was well spent

We believe that peer-to-peer sessions are the most powerful way to facilitate interaction, build networks, and collaborate.

For that reason, the Mozilla Festival de-emphasizes lectures and presentations, and instead encourages dialog and hacking in small groups.

The bulk of time in a session will be spent in groups of 5 people or less.

Since the Mozilla Festival is very fluid, you can expect anywhere between 5 - 50 people in your session. Be prepared for all contingencies.

As a facilitator, your task will be to:

• State the goals of your session
• Team up participants in small groups
• Ensure participants work productively and purposefully together.

A good session proposal explains:

• The purpose of the session and why it matters
• Why participants should consider joining, and what value they will get out of it
• How you will facilitate the the session
• How the outcomes of your session will be applied

Three Session Formats

The event revolves around three formats:

Design Challenge

What is it: A session where participants collaboratively create one or more designs to address a need or challenge

How do you do it:

• Define an interesting challenge or question to explore.
• Team up different skill-sets to brainstorm solutions.
• Collaboratively build a 'minimum viable prototype' to demonstrate your idea.

Example design challenges:

• How can we design self-guided experiences or “learning missions” that teach youth the basics of HTML and CSS.
• How can we better verify news sources in real-time crisis reporting?
• How can we tell stories more effectively using media across a timeline?

Learning Labs

What is it:

How do you do it:

• Introduce a new skill.
• Invite participants to try it themselves.
• Participants become mentors and teach newcomers.

Example learning labs:

• HTML basics: Get started with your first website
• Working in the open: Soft skills for the webmaker community
• How to prototype with paper

Fireside Chats

What is it:

How do you do it:

• Host an open discussion around an interesting issue.
• Provide context and invite questions.
• Explore new approaches to the issue.

Example Fireside Chats:

• The State of 3D Open-Source Gaming on the Web
• Behind the Scenes: Live Blogs during Arab Spring
• Approaches to a Web Literate Planet

How to propose a session or activity

1. Go to this URL. ____ 2. Answer these questions*:

• What will your session or activity allow people to make, learn or do?
• How do you see that working?
• How will you deal with 5, 15, 50 participants?
• How long within your session before someone else can teach this?
• What do you see as outcomes after the festival?
• *This is all hackable. These questions are for people who want help framing their session.

3. Email michelle@mozillafoundation.org when you're done to let the festival team know about your proposal. We'll be in touch!