There and Back Again
My journey from attending one MozFest to help building the next!
The journey begins
About eight months ago I was at an airport in São Paulo, waiting for a few hours before my flight back home in Maceió, in northeast Brazil — I was getting back from my very first MozFest. I was completely exhausted but also really, really happy, so it came to my mind that I should take the opportunity to write about the awesome experience I had attending to the festival. I actually opened up my computer, but in the end I was more tired than I thought, and that text never came to be. I did wrote about it later and shared the experience with my students and colleagues back in my university, but I felt that the text I envisioned at that moment was lost… Until a few months ago! ;)
What happened is that I got an email that completely made my day. It was about MozRetreat, a meeting that would invite (and I’ll quote the message) “a team of friends, partners, network members, Mozilla staff and first-time collaborators to become festival wranglers and shape the design of the MozFest program”. And I was invited. For a moment, I literally couldn’t believe it. I mean, I actually closed the email, stared at my computer for a few seconds, opened it again and read it two more times — and I’m not kidding at all! I got more happy than anyone could possibly get from an email, and at that moment all the “MozFest awesomeness” came back to me: so here I am writing this text, after coming back from MozRetreat and still completely energized from it. :)
With this new text — which is not the same I imagined at the airport, but it does take some of its essence — I would like to share my personal experience about this ongoing journey between two MozFests. Attending to the festival in 2017 was really important for me. It was an amazing chance to connect to a lot of people also interested in Open Science and Open Knowledge: to meet, learn from and be heard by them. And going beyond my particular interests, it was a fantastic opportunity to meet some awesome people genuinely concerned about freedom, privacy, diversity and literacy over the web. I got completely absorbed and amazed by the sessions I was able to attend to, and I felt really special to have the opportunity to hold my own session there. For those who never went to a MozFest before, I should say that it is probably not like anything you have experienced. Coming from the academic world, I had the chance to attend some cool academic congresses myself — but none was so remarkable to me as MozFest was.
Ok, so now you might understand my reaction about my invitation to MozRetreat, right? To be able to just go to MozFest again would be really great. Getting invited to actually help building it, was beyond anything I could imagine... But it is happening! :D
At Eindhoven
So, this is not a text (only) about how happy I got with that email: it is about my journey, thereby I should tell you all about MozRetreat, right? We met in Eidhoven, The Netherlands, and for three days we worked on building the next MozFest. But that does not tell much… So let’s start on the “we”: about 40 people, coming from different countries and with completely backgrounds — but with a common goal. It was an amazing group, and I felt that the mix of shared interests with distinct experiences was perfect for our task. And now, let’s go on with the “work”: we had the most amazing facilitators (I’m looking at you, Sarah and Beatrice), that organized the event in a way that we would start thinking about the big picture — our dreams and hopes about MozFest — and finish knowing what exactly each of us would do in the next few months.
As our first dynamics happened, we slowly organized ourselves into themed-based groups, each one focusing in some aspect of the festival. And it was with no surprise that I ended up with the Openness space group, since it easily relates to Open Science.
After Eindhoven
I’m glad that this time it didn’t took me eight months to write! \o/
Looking back, I’m still amazed on how many work we were able to do in just three days — and I thank our facilitators for that! The cool thing is that we we did worked and accomplished a lot, but also had the chance to engage in other activities: from yoga to bike riding, and from a embroidery workshop to using a VR machine! I see now that all our external activities and fantastic dinners also helped us to connect and bond, and thanks to that I came back knowing that I have some new friends. Right now, I’m happy to have the opportunity to meet again with them online, both to work and to chat, as we plan and work on the details about the festival.
We still have a long way to go and I know that it’s going to be a lot of work for us wranglers, but I got back from Eindhoven with a lot of energy, a clear vision about the Festival we are going to build and knowing my role in all this. MozFest 2018 is going to be an amazing, fun, inclusive and productive event, and I hope you will join us! And if you are considering to facilitate a sessions there (and you should), now is the time, as the call for proposals are open until August 1.
