Mozilla Drumbeat Festival - Nov 4+5, Barcelona June 12, 2010

Save the date: November 4+5, 2010, Barcelona

Learning, freedom and the web are connected. This connection has huge potential. The technology and culture of the internet offer the raw material to put people in control of their own learning in a massive and transformative way. At the same time, teachers and learners can play a critical role in ensuring that these raw materials -- and the internet as a whole -- remain open and free.

This is the focus of Mozilla's first annual Drumbeat Festival: gathering passionate and practical people who are experimenting, inventing, creating, exploring and building things at the intersection of learning, freedom and the web.

Sign up for updates: http://drumbeat.org/drumbeat_festival_2010

* What? Shaping the future of learning right now.

Drumbeat Festival 2010 will showcase people, ideas and projects with huge potential. Things like:

1. A secure 'data backpack' where students control their own learning materials and credentials
2. Libraries transformed into digital garages where kids learn to make, do and create with an agile, hacker attitude
3. Massively scaled apprenticeship, we people learn by diving into the world of open source master craftspeople
4. Hackerspaces where people teach each other about everything from robots to lasers to knitting
5. Alternative accreditation models based on web and open source peer review techniques

The idea is to gather people working on ideas like this -- and people with all the puzzle pieces needed to make them real at a massive scale. Data portability. Open educational resources. Secure, decentralized storage in the cloud. Open content licenses. Agile thinking. Open, user controlled online identity. Massive, credible informal learning opportunities. Passion.

* Who? Inventors. Learners. Hackers. Teachers. Artists. You!

The good news: we have all these puzzle pieces in our hands already. We just need the right people to get into a room and use them. That's the spirit of the Drumbeat Festival.

People and orgs we'll invite to Barcelona include: Web tech companies. P2P University course leaders. Digital learning startups. Hackerspaces. Creative Commoners. Online identity experts. Wikipedians. Software developers. Filmmakers. Web standards nerds. Open web activists. Artists. Web developers. Teachers. Foundations. And, of course, learners of all stripes.

* Why is Mozilla doing this?

We believe that everyone has a role in keeping the web open and vibrant. That's why we started Mozilla Drumbeat: a collection of practical projects and local events that gather smart, creative people around big ideas that improve the open web. The annual Drumbeat Festival is a part of this, bringing together people doing things at the intersection of the open web and other important aspects of our society. The first Festival will focus on the connection between learning, freedom and the web.