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Sunday 8 December 2013

Maker Party - Mozfest - What we learned


The end of the year 2013 nears and does the Maker Party 2013. The Maker Party being the most successful Webmaker collaborative event till date, saw a lot of teaching, learning and making. The shear idea of making what you want - the way you want strikes untouched chords of interest in many across the globe. 


The web is open and free. We should care about it by understanding it and building our own version of the it, drives the amazing phenomenon of the maker fair.

This year in 2013 it all started with the announcement of theMaker Party 2013 (formally known as the summer code party). 


Webmaker : The idea of Mozilla, teach the web to the world with the core motivation of web literacy using connected learning is the birth concept of Webmaker. The whole idea behind the “view page source” where we can view, copy, paste and tweak the code to make it our own made the internet the revolutionary tool it is today. Webmaker follows the same idea. Webmaker enables people to make, remix and build upon the works of others by exploring the endless possibilities the internet offers. The easy to use Webmaker tools viz: Thimble, Popcorn maker and X-ray goggles offer learning and understanding of the technologies the web is built in while creating great content.






Get involved - its an easy 4 step process :)
  1. Visit webmaker.org.
  2. Claim your user name.
  3. Create an original, remix something fun or start from a template.
  4. Help us test and improve the site.

Webmaker mentors: With webmaker the mission is dedicated to keeping the web open, accessible and free. To accomplish this, there is a need of more than technology: there is a need people who are empowered to build and take control of their own online lives. The synergic working of a global community of teachers and learners makes webmaker a big collaborative effort. The teachers here become mentors and these mentors are the people who are interested and motivated to teach the web to others in an interest based peer-to-peer learning method.



Mark Surman -Executive director @ Mozilla. says  When we talk about a global community of mentors, we’re talking about a global community of people who want to teach the web. We’re talking about formal educators, we’re talking about people outside the school system, we’re talking about techies, and we’re talking about parents.

I feel lucky being a part of the mentor structure. By teaching the web and evangelising the open web & open standards I can feel the positive contribution I am making to the betterment of the internet, the society and ultimately the coming generation.

The Maker Parties: Mozilla kicked off the Maker Party 2013 with a bang on June 15 2013. Webmaker task force India decide to kickstart the maker party in India on the same day with Maker party Pune event. For the next three months, people around the world gathered at great events, making cool stuff and sharing it all online. The goal was to host a worldwide party celebrating all the amazing things we can make and learn thanks to the web. 



Being a part of this amazing collaborative effort called the Maker Party 2013, I had an amazing learning experience. Many event hosts were not formal educators, hosting successful maker parties they proved that teaching the web was easy, fun and very productive. By connecting with other web enthusiasts eager to share skills, Maker Parties were a great way to gain experience and form networks.  Near to 1700 Maker Parties were held in 330 cities across the globe. India was called the epicenter of the webmaker activities by one of the Webmaker’s community engagement personnel. 





Maker parties I attended, facilitated, organized or mentored this season: 
Getting involved was easy:
Maker Party ran from June 15 to September 15. Visit webmaker.org/party to:

The Mozilla Festival: We visited, We made and We hacked together at the Mozilla festival. The world’s biggest maker party was all-n-all fun for the attendees.




1,300 hackers, media-makers and educators gather in London to invent the web’s future – said the headline of the blog by Matt Thompson about the MozFest

The Mozfest was a three day festival in London of making and learning. I was fortunate enough for being able to be a part of this amazing gathering of webmakers from around the globe. A big thanks to Michelle Thorne and Laura Hilliger for inviting me to the mozfest in the #teactheweb track. The venue Ravensbourne in East London was full of hacking and inventing together, building prototypes and curriculum for teaching everything from basic coding, to protecting online privacy, to integrating the open web into fields like journalism and science.

From talking about why I teach the web, Hacking some Tshirts, Playing with the LEDs on a biker jacket, earning open badges, mentoring at the webmaker tools pod to having the awesome #mozfest coffee the complete experience was overwhelming. 

 

 

Specifically talking about one such experience: It was day 1 at mozfest and at the teach the web track we had a webmaker learning booth. With a screen showing the live makes by the attendees it was one of the busiest booths. I was at the Student Ambassador’s booth, Jacob Caggiano (one of the most active contibutors to webmaker) came running in towards me and said “Ankit, checkout this amazing feature in popcorn its called hacking together ” (it was popcorn maker fussed with together.js to give it a new dimension of collaborative making. This was already implemented in Thimble and worked wonders.) I went with him to the now empty webmaker booth, we started hacking a popcorn make together and soon many eger and interested people started storming in. Many said “Wow this is such a cool tool, how can we do it?” and me and Jacob started teaching them the same. The mozfest attendees kept on hacking with the webmaker tools and sharing with an awe! I did feel the amazingness of the tools at that moment, with webmaker the maker gets the superpower of altering and remixing the web he/she wants.

 

With 10 key tracks mozfest did induce a sense of belonging and care towards the open web.

  • Teach the Web. New approaches for teaching digital skills, coding and webmaking.
  • Connect Your City. Building local digital learning networks around the world.
  • Skills and Badges. New ways to recognize skills and learning that happen anywhere.
  • Look Who’s Watching. Privacy, surveillance and tracking. How do we protect transparency and user sovereignty online?
  • Open Games. The web as an open gaming console for the world. Play and create next-generation web-based games.
  • Source Code for Journalism. Creating the tools news organizations needs to thrive on the open web.
  • Science and the Web. Redefining how we experiment, analyze and share scientific knowledge.
  • Open Data for the Open Web. Uncovering and building with data from the web and everyday world.
  • Making the Web Physical. Hacking on physcial devices and gizmos connected to the web in exciting new ways.
  • Webmaking for Mobile. Making apps and tinkering with your own phone. The web as platform.

 

 I as all other participants at the mozfest earned Open Badges, as part of Mozilla’s open source project to reimagine credentialing on the web. Many also issued their own Open Badges on-site using community-created tools like Makebadg.es and Achievery.com. A lot of badges, stickers and the awesome customized mozfest swag were the takeaways. 

 The after event parties are always filled with fun and creativity. Singing the Lungi Dance I had a lot of fun making every body dance at the Alphabet in the O2 arena.

 

 

 

Visiting the creativity & make filled mozfest and the awesome monuments & heritage filled London was indeed a dream come true.


What we learned: 
 # Reflection:
·         What's worked for Webmaking in 2013?
o   The new webmker.org website.
o   The featured makes (gave a lot of confidence to makers to do more and make more).
o   Mentorship structure.
o   The webmaker swag (ordering it was accessible to all)
o   Anybody can host a makerparty anywhere.
·         What have we enjoyed?
o   Inclusion of Javascript and together.js in Webmaking.
o   Hive and Webmaker party fusion.
o   Themed maker parties.
o   Facilitating and speaking about why we should care about open web.
o   Mentoring on webmaker.

·         What made the most impact?
o   The mentorship structure has installed a sense of belonging  towards webmaker and making, the maker party attendees also felt motivated with mentors around.
o   Themed maker parties made a huge impact, especially in India maker parties with theme produced more makes than non-themed parties. Eg: Independence Day Maker party.
o   Webmaker Swag.


Whats next?
 #Vision:
·         What we are excited about for 2014?
o   Offline webmaker tools.
o   JS teaching kits using webmaker.
o   Openbadges in webmaker
o   Maker Party 2014
·         Where are the biggest opportunities for Webmaking?
o   Science + Webmaking
o   Openbadges + Webmaker
o   A defined common Structure for maker parties (this can be hacked to be practically possible in your region).
o   Focus on children and school students, teaching them to become mentors.
o   As online courses/demos for learning HTML-CSS-JS    
·         What can be done better or differently to get there?
o   Science + Webmaking – learning templates for easy understanding. Eg: Converting programing concept documents to thimble/popcorn templates. 
o   Prioritise after event follow up.
o   Inclusion of open badges using step wise badge awarding process. Eg: Beginner, expert, theme maker, Yay your first maker! badge and more.
o   Easy event and mentorship guides for newbies.
o   Creation of slides and information templates for speakers and organizers (this will help them answer questions during maker parties). 





Pictures from the maker parties: http://is.gd/V4EEZf
Pictures from Mozfest 2013: http://is.gd/ufAWwJ
Webmaker + together.js: http://is.gd/Q8QpJK

Wednesday 20 November 2013

Mozilla Summit 2013: An amazing experience

Sharing my experience of Mozilla biggest volunteer gathering the Mozilla Summit 2013.



The Invitation:

I cannot describe the hype I felt when my name appeared in the official invites list for the Mozilla Summit 2013. All set to jolt down things I will have to keep ready before my travel, little did I know how awesome this experience will be. The summit was organized at three different locations around the globe viz Santa Clara USA, Toronto Canada and Brussels Turkey -  may be due to the shear number of participants it involved, each location had around 700 registered attendees. 

I was scheduled to attend it in Santa Clara, San Francisco USA. I jumped to cloud nine when I read this. This was going to be my first time in the US of A and yes yes yes it was the silicon valley where I was visiting, the excitement was at its peak. All set with my visa, travel itinerary, packed bags and a computer I just wanted to jet out of my house to meet those amazing mozillians and have an experience of a life time.

Mozilla Summit:


“The Mozilla summit 2013 is a world wide gathering of Mozillians all coming together for three-days of inspiration, connection, and purpose.”  said the Mozilla community blog. I believed it and prayed that the summit not to be all sessions, talks only. Ahh ! and yes it was absolutely not. The summit works actually focused on a small handful of keynotes, interactive fun and scientific fairs and sessions designed by Mozillians – to develop a shared understanding  of who we are as Mozilla, what we’re trying to accomplish, and how we go about doing so.


Facilitator at the Summit:
During the Hive India initiation event I was hinted by Michelle Thorn about my selection to facilitate some sessions at the summit. This being and opportunity for me to have a talk with mozillians over  the subjects like “we have work to do figuring out how to concretely build out the Web that the world needs and deserves” , “How to build a Mozilla core experience for the community” and “We are building a global movement of Webmakers.” I was a bit nervous too.  Seeing my name flash on the Mozilla sessions wiki for the 4 sessions of the 1st 2 days at the summit I was overwhelmed. Being co-facilitator for these sessions the preparations were on the way.  Facilitating with the likes of Brett Gaylor, Kathryn Meisner , Jacob Caggiano, Vineel Reddy Pindi, Benny Chandra it was special feeling for me.


The journey:
I had no idea of what lay ahead with my experience of the LONG journey awaiting me to reach the Summit venue. The journey seemed to look like this when I set out of home:

 Pune Mumbai London San Fransisco(SFO)


But on reaching the Mumbai airport we were told the United airlines flight from London to SFO was cancelled. I was yet to start my journey to the summit and news struck me with unimaginable force. Some how I made it to London and upon inquiring with the United airlines counter I was told that all my fellow Mozillian travelers were routed through a flight from Washington to SFO and it was only me who was given a flight from Chicago to SFO. I had no choice but to travel alone over this journey and make it to the summit So my updated itinerary now was:

Pune Mumbai London Chicago San Fransisco(SFO)

I was scheduled to reach the summit venue by 13:00 hours and now I had no clue when I would get there. Getting into the United aircraft for Chicago there was no reason for me to be optimistic about my alone boring journey with a comparatively low standard service in the United airlines. I greeted the fellow travel who sat next to me on the plane. He seemed to be less talkative and so I took the initiative to have a chat. After a small introduction and a hello I again found myself out of topics to keep the conversation going on and I retreated. While again stating at  people still adjusting their baggage I suddenly saw my fellow traveler removing his jacket and keeping it under the front seat. The glowing white embroidered sign of “Mozilla” flashed on the jacket and I felt my eyes glitter. I had found a diamond in the coal world, he was a mozillain too or may be an employee. I looked at him with hope and asked do you work for Mozilla and are you going to the Summit at Santa Clara, "YES!" he said and I felt relaxed by the fact that I am not alone in this world who is traveling to Summit through Chicago.
Meeting mozillians where you least expect them was an experience that had just started for me. At the Chicago Airport the  United airlines again had their aircraft to SFO canceled. With no hope of getting to the summit in time I decided to explore the airport. A hand tapped me from behind in this new country, I turned and found a person extending a hand saying “Hi, you are a mozillan – me too recognized you from the Firefox shirt you are wearing. I am Robert Sayles.” he said. An awestruck me said “Yes the world is small, surprising and filled with Mozillians.” And we had a laugh.

 Robert  was headed for Toronto for the summit we had a brief chat about Webmaker, Mozilla and the open web.  But importantly I had to share my sad traveling experience with a friend and Robby had to be the one. Soon the news of a new aircraft available for SFO sprung on the announcement and I felt relaxed. Bidding adieu to Robby after a 7 hours journey to the SFO airport and an awesome Lincoln taxi ride to the Santa Clara Marriott I was sleeping on the bed tired at 2 am and hopeful of the 1st day of the summit being awesome.

The start:
After the morning breakfast we were all set to for Tristan Nitot's welcome speech. Admiring my summit welcome kit Mitchell Baker appeared on the large screens, it was a recorded version of her speech “The Nature of Mozilla” from Brussels. You just cant think of anything else when she talks.
“At its heart, Mozilla is a community of people who share a common purpose: promoting the traits that have made the internet so powerful, flexible and innovative to date.   These traits, such as openness, freedom to innovate, interoperability, decentralized decision-making and user control, represent both who we are and a key strategic asset in developing  market relevance and impact.”
-          - Mithell Baker
The Summit welcome pack

Feeling  fortunate for being able to attend the summit I saw Brett Gaylor walk on the stage for the Webmaker update.

The webmaker mention:
Working as a Webmaker mentor and attending all those maker parties, Webmaker Community calls and the Webmaker mentor meetings I never knew I was about to get surprised at the summit.  Brett Gaylor with his talk about Webmaker and its future in crafting the understanding about Open web showcased together.js in Webmaker tools like Thimble . The small webmaker exercise of me teaching the web to Amiti Dave a student of VIT using webmaker tool Thimble with together.js flashed on the big screens. I felt all the Mozilla India members looking at me and clapping for my contribution, I didn’t know what to do with this sudden applause. I felt a two hands holding my shoulder to make me stand. It was Amir Aharoni  (mentors me on Wikimedia projects) giving me a pat on the back. It felt the world revolve around me, it is such an awesome feeling to get an appreciation from your mentor I can’t describe in words.

The country fair:
With lunch on the way it was time for the country fair, mozillians from different countries stationed on their country booth displayed the cultural heritage. India booth was colorful with a lot of home made food items, flags, buttons, traditional outfits worn by Mozillains from India must have been the talk of the day.
Mozilla India booth

Mozilla Slovenia community


Sessions and co-facilitators: 
It was time to co-facilitate a session about  Building a Web Literate World”. Starting with a spectrogram activity we had many ideas flowing in. The brain storming on various understandings about the open web made it a fruitful learning activity.

Time for some spectrogram activity


The session with Scott Storey about “Defining and Packaging a Mozilla Core experience for onboarding” the discussions centered around various aspects of on-boarding tools present and what we can do to make it better.
Brainstormed about experience for Onboarding

We’re building a global movement of Webmakers: Join us” was the most amazing session I co-facilitated with Brett Gaylor, Jacob Caggiano and Yoe One. Different pods for understanding different aspects of webmaker were set up. Events pod was handled by me, Yoe One and Kathryn Meisner. Webmaker translation by Jacob and Dev by Brett. The most productive of the sessions this proved to be a learning experience for me.
Facilitators
List of sessions:


open badges
Webmaker mini maker party @ summit

Visit to Mozilla US office - A dream come true:

Excited to be at the Mozilla office
Many mozillians including me visited the Mozilla office at Santa Clara. The excitement of having a look at the Mozilla work environment was amazing. Mitchell Baker’s desk was the highlight of the trip with a very simple assembly of a computer and some essential stuff at work, it was the personification of her simple personality. We left some notes on her desk thanking her for all she does for the open web which inspires us to keep protecting it.
Mitchell Baker's Work Desk

The amazing food, drinks and party:

Mozilla always keeps up to the high standards when it comes to food, drinks and party. The amazing American food had me craving for it more and more. Even if it is a no for me on alcohol I quenched my thirst with some sparkled drinks. The  Karaoke performances, Visit to the great America amusement park and the Party on the Summit closing night were awesome.

Mozilla India at the Summit:

Mozilla India as a community was represented truly with a huge number at the Summit. Being a mix of Developers, Localizers, Webmakers and Sumos, also flaunted their new T-shirts saying “Mozilla India“. From Country fair, Science fair, Dev talks, webmaker, Localizations and Sumo Mozillians from India had a noticeable contribution at the summit.

A total learning experience:

At the end of the Summit we had looked at the values and the future of Mozilla’s products together. We built new relationships by digging in practically, solving problems and making plans. We now have a clearer idea of the product strategy and how it moves our mission forward. We left the Summit stronger as a community with a clearer picture of the world we want to build on the internet.


Commitment was what I noticed in the mozillians here at the Summit. People were not just energetic, enthusiastic and focused but seemed to have a deep commitment to the cause they are volunteering for. Mozilla Summit 2013 indeed was a learning experience.

We are protecting the world's biggest public resource The Internet.

Learn More. Do More. Do Better.



We <3 Mozilla