Tag: Mozilla Festival

Weeknote 41/2013

Posted on October 11, 2013 by Doug Belshaw

This week I’ve been:

Returning from the Mozilla Summit. I wrote up the things that blew my mind the most.
Attending my usual weekly calls. There was, understandably, less energy around the place.
Working with the Webmaker team to transfer the Web Literacy Standard. You can see the progress of that here.
Talking to various people, including the BBC, about using Open Badges for events.
Getting excited at the SQA’s official statement of support for Open Badges.
Putting together a couple of proposals (with colleagues) for the DML 2014 conference.
Working from the Ignite100 loft. I haven’t been for a while so it was good to see some familiar faces.
Updating the GitHub repository for the Web Literacy Standard to v1.0 of the specification using GitBox (thanks for the help, Nabil!)
Taking PTO (a.k.a. holiday) on Friday to look after my two year-old daughter as we’ve got some childcare issues at the moment.

Next week I’m planning to take Thursday off as there’s a teacher strike in the North East so both my son and daughter will be at home. I’ve no chance of doing any work! Other than that I’ll just be preparing for the Mozilla Festival. You should come.

Weeknote 35/2013

Posted on August 31, 2013September 14, 2013 by Doug Belshaw

This week I’ve been:

Observing the Summer Bank Holiday in England. Well, apart from the Web Literacy Standard community call. You can listen again to that here.
Catching up with email during a fleeting visit to the Ignite100 co-working space.
Thinking and writing more about HTML and CSS as skills rather than competencies.
Sorting out which service to use to store and sync my files. My blog post about moving from Dropbox to SpiderOak Hive hit the front page of Hacker News and led to 16,000 page views in 12 hours!
Attending the Open Badges research and community calls.
Giving feedback on various session proposal for the Mozilla Festival.
Mapping existing learning activities to the Web Literacy Standard.
Reading up about cryptography. The CryptoParty handbook is fantastic for beginners.
Speaking with some people interested in aligning with the Web Literacy Standard (including Makers Academy)
Replying to BBC Bitesize who wanted answers to some specific questions in preparation for an upcoming audio interview. I blogged my responses:
Meeting with Tim Riches from DigitalMe who’s helping wrangle the Badges & Skills floor at MozFest.
Resolving with Alvar Maciel and William Duyck how to go about translating the Web Literacy Standard effectively.

Monday is Labor Day in the US which will means I’ll have a quiet start to the week. I’m not travelling anywhere so I’m looking forward to getting stuff done before heading to Amsterdam with my wife to celebrate our 10 year wedding anniversary!

My next 100 days at Mozilla

Posted on August 23, 2013 by Doug Belshaw

Last May when I was just about to start working at Mozilla, Nick Dennis gave me some great advice. He said that I should thrash out with my line manager what I should focus on during my first 100 days, defining what ‘success’ looked like at the end of that period.

For whatever reason, I didn’t take Nick’s advice and, indeed, felt a bit lost at sea by Christmas. That’s not anyone’s fault, particularly, it’s just that I was used to working in an institutional environment (schools/universities) and Mozilla’s, well… different.

So I thought I’d take the opportunity when changing teams within Mozilla to belatedly take Nick’s advice and discuss with my new line manager Chris Lawrence what I should be doing from now until Christmas. Admittedly, that’s a little over 100 days, but it’s close enough. Here’s what we came up with – and what that includes, in no particular order:

1. Release the Web Literacy Standard v1.0 at MozFest

Work with Michelle Thorne to encourage session leaders to tag their sessions with skills and competencies from the Standard.
Work with Laura Hilliger on relevant session proposals relating to the Standard
Propose a facilitated version of the community work from calls.

2. Transfer the Web Literacy Standard to webmaker.org

Work with the Webmaker team to integrate the Standard across webmaker.org.
Liaise with Chris Appleton on the design work around the Standard.

3. Prepare for a Web Literacy Standard alignment contest

Aim for January 2014 and announce at MozFest.
Work with organisations who are interested in aligning before then.
Find people to judge competition.
Work with MozLegal and other people who will be able to help (like Chloe Varelidi)

4. Dive into Mentor Team-related stuff

Focus on breaking silos and making links with other teams.
Be a thought leaders post-Mozilla Summit for ‘One Mozilla’.
Work with the Mentor Team to bring Open Badges into their projects.

5. Set up a cross-Mozilla Foundation community working group

Focus on sharing good practices.
Systematise internal and external-facing processes.
Potentially take over running of the weekly Webmaker call.

Obviously, there’s other things that are assumed (like building up a collection of animated GIFs and deploying them appropriately) and other things that will emerge but, for now, I think that’s a great starting point!

Main image CC BY quapan