Month: October 2014

A 10-point #MozFest survival guide

Posted on October 21, 2014October 21, 2014 by Doug Belshaw

It’s the Mozilla Festival in London this weekend. It’s sold out, so you’ll have to beg, borrow or steal a ticket! This will will be my fourth, and third as a paid contributor (i.e. Mozilla employee).

Here’s my tips for getting the most of it.

1. Attend the whole thing

There’s always the temptation with multi-day events not to go to each of the days. It’s easy to slip off into the city – especially if it’s one you haven’t been to before. However, that would a real shame as there’s so much to do and see at MozFest. Plus, you really should have booked a few days either side to chill out.

2. Sample everything

Some tracks will grab you more than others. However, with nine floors and multiple sessions happening at the same time, there’s always going to be something to keep you entertained. Feel free to vote with your feet if you’re not getting maximum value from a session – and drop into something you don’t necessarily know a lot about!

3. Drink lots

Not alcohol or coffee – although there’ll be plenty of that on offer! I mean fluids that will rehydrate you. At the Mozilla Summit at the end of last year we were all given rehydration powder along with a Camelbak refillable bottle. This was the perfect combination and I urge you to bring something similar. Pro tip: if you can’t find the powder (it’s harder to come by in the UK) just put a slice of lemon in the bottom of the bottle to keep it tasting fresh all day!

4. Introduce yourself to people

The chances are that you don’t know all 1,600 people who have tickets for MozFest. I know I don’t! You should feel encouraged to go up and introduce yourself to people who look lost, bewildered, or at a loose end. Sample phrases that seem to work well:

“Wow, it’s pretty crazy, eh?”
“Hi! Which session have you just been to?”
“Is this your first MozFest?”

5. Take time out

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed, so feel free to find a corner, put your headphones on and zone out for a while. You’ll see plenty of people doing this – on all floors! Pace yourself – it’s a marathon, not a sprint.

6. Wear comfortable shoes/clothing

There are lifts at the venue but, as you can imagine, with so many people there they get full quickly. As a result there’ll be plenty of walking up and down stairs. Wear your most comfortable pair of shoes and clothing that’ll still look good when you’re a sticky mess. 😉

7. Expect tech fails

I’ve been to a lot of events and at every single one, whether because of a technical problem or human error, there’s been a tech fail. Expect it! Embrace it. The wifi is pretty good, but mobile phone coverage is poor. Plan accordingly and have a backup option.

8. Ask questions

With so many people coming from so many backgrounds and disciplines, it’s difficult to know the terminology involved. If someone ‘drops a jargon bomb’ then you should call them out on it. If you don’t know what they mean, then the chances are others won’t know either. And if you’re the one doing the explaining, be aware that others may not share your context.

9. Come equipped

Your mileage may vary, but I’d suggest the following:

Bag
Laptop
Mobile phone and/or tablet
Pen
Notepad
Multi-gang extension lead
Charging cables
Headphones
Snacks (e.g. granola bars)
Refillable water bottle

I’d suggest a backpack as something over one shoulder might eventually cause pain. You might also want to put a cloth bag inside the bag you’re carrying in case you pick up extra stuff.

10. Build (and network!)

MozFest is a huge opportunity to meet and co-create stuff with exceptionally talented and enthusiastic people. So get involved! Bring your skills and lend a hand in whatever’s being built. If nothing else, you can take photos and help document the festival.

The strapline of MozFest is ‘arrive with an idea, leave with a community’. Unlike some conferences that have subtitles that, frankly, bear no relation to what actually happens, this one is dead on. You’ll want to keep in touch with people, so in addition to the stuff listed above you might want to bring business cards. Far from being a 20th century thing, I’ve found them much more useful than just writing on a scrap of paper or exchanging Twitter usernames.

This isn’t meant to be comprehensive, just my top tips. But I’d be very interested to hear your advice to newbies if you’re a MozFest veteran! Leave a comment below. 🙂

Image CC BY-SA Alan Levine

Update: my colleague Kay Thaney has a great list of blighty sights that you should check out too!

Weeknote 42/2014

Posted on October 17, 2014October 17, 2014 by Doug Belshaw

This week I’ve been:

Contributing to the OEPS Forum launch in Edinburgh on Monday. They kindly allowed me to talk about the Web Literacy Map. I wrote the event up here.
Updating the Badge Alliance wiki page for the Digital & Web Literacies working group I co-chair.
Finishing off the above working group’s deliverable – a document containing things to consider when constructing a badged pathway around the Web Literacy Map‘s Privacy competency. I wrote about it here.
Booking my travel to/from MozFest (London, next week) the Safer Internet Forum (Brussels, November), and the Mozilla ‘coincidental’ workweek (Portland, Oregon, December).
Setting up the series of seven Web Literacy Map v2.0 community calls, starting next Monday. I wrote about them here.
Pulling out and surfacing some of the interesting feedback we’ve received so far from the Web Literacy Map v2.0 community survey. I wrote about that here.
Co-ordinating the translation of the Web Literacy Map v2.0 survey into other languages. I then created the surveys for translated and reviewed languages. Currently, we’re double-checking hi_IN (Hindi), es_CL (Spanish), ml (Malalayam) and fr (French). On Monday I’ll write a post for the Webmaker blog about the whole process so far and how to get involved.
Creating a landing page for most of the contribution and web literacy badges your can earn through Webmaker. You can access that here.
Attending the TeachMeet & Greet event on Wednesday night before the Digitally Confident conference. I had too much on for MozFest to attend the latter, but the TeachMeet was a great opportunity to meet up with people I don’t see often enough – like Graham Brown-Martin, Jim Knight, Zoe Ross, José Picardo and Simon Finch. I followed that up on Friday with an fantastic 2½ hour conversation with Dai Barnes, my former co-host for EdTechRoundUp.
Meeting with Adam Lofting and Simon Knight to plan our MozFest session: Learning Analytics for good in the age of Big Data. I also met with Karen Smith to discuss what we’re doing in our session on Prototypes and Pathways for Web Literacy.

Next week I’ll be working from home on Monday and Tuesday, getting things ready for the Mozilla Festival. Then I’ll be travelling down to London on Wednesday to meet my colleagues. MozFest itself starts on Friday evening and runs until Sunday afternoon.

Post-MozFest, I’m taking a few days off as it’s my children’s half-term (and I’ll be knackered). I’ll not be writing any weeknotes in November and December as I’ll be on #BelshawBlackOps14.

Image CC BY-NC-SA Evan Leeson

[INCOMING] #BelshawBlackOps14

Posted on October 15, 2014 by Doug Belshaw

TL;DR: as I’ve done for the past few years, I’ll be spending some time away from personal email, blogging and social networking during the months of November and December. You can see what I got up to last year here.

‘Belshaw Black Ops’ is the name Paul Lewis gave to my annual time away from personal email, blogging, social networking, and writing my weekly newsletter. The aim is to recharge, both mentally and physically. Due to Seasonal Affective Disorder and living at 55.2° latitude, I’m a different version of Doug in the winter months.

This will be my fourth year of ‘black ops’ and it will be the second time I’ve spent two months away from email, blogging and social networking. I’ll be reading more books, watching more films, and generally pursuing longer-form, less emotionally-draining things. Boone Gorges summed it up well when he said:

A life spent on Twitter is a death by a thousand emotional microtransactions. I want to be pouring these energies into my family and my friends and my work.

Unlike Boone, I’m not saying ‘goodbye’, but merely ‘adieu’ for a defined period.

So if you need to contact me in November/December, first think about whether it can wait until January 1st. If you decide that it can’t, then you can find me in the places I hang out for work (Skype/IRC, mostly). It’s also not hard to find/guess my Mozilla email address.

Oh, and if you’ve got any recommended reading/watching to add to my list, please do add a comment below!

Image CC BY-NC-SA Stéfan