The plan for our first Drumbeat Festival has really snapped into focus over the last week. The theme is ‘learning, freedom and the web’ — connecting people on the radical, disruptive edge of learning with people from the open web world. It’s happening in Barcelona from November 3 – 5. I’m stoked. Really.
Right now, we’re focused on refining the theme and recruiting a handful of high profile participants. Here is the current version of our top level blurb:
The web is changing how we learn. It surrounds us with a massive and remixable tapestry of perspectives, facts and data. It gives us the freedom to learn whatever we want at our own speed and in our own way. It lets us become our own teachers. Fundamentally: the free and open nature of the internet is revolutionizing learning.
Who among us has not fallen into a long journey across the web on a surprising topic? Or learned a new skill by making, building or creating something online? Or, for that matter, found a new mentor or apprentice in a forum or on a social network? More and more, this is how we learn.
The open technology and culture of the web are at the heart of this revolution. They give us raw material to take control of our own learning. Teachers and learners around the world are experimenting, inventing, creating, exploring and building in wonderful ways with this raw material. They are living at the intersection of learning, freedom, and the web. Mozilla’s 2010 Drumbeat Festival is a gathering of these people.
You can read the full ‘save the date’ announcement on drumbeat.org. You can also sign up for updates, which you should do if you’re interested in coming.
A number of participants from the broader Mozilla family are already confirmed Mitchell Baker, Joi Ito, Brian Behlendorf are already confirmed. And Drumbeat projects like P2PU School of Web Craft and Web Made Movies will be there in force. If you have suggestions for people or projects to inivite, please let me know. You can post as comments below or on this wiki page for people to invite.
Online Potenzmittel
I am really psyched about this.
It might be a stretch, but I’m wondering if it’d be useful to invite someone from 826 National. They’re dedicated to helping students with expository and creative writing, and they have a big focus on “making things”: they help their students publish their works as handmade books, for instance, and my local chapter actually works with a middle school to help kids make video podcasts. Austin King taught a class on HTML at 826 Seattle last summer, and it would be awesome to see more stuff like this.
Another person that might be useful to invite is Ellen Lupton (http://elupton.com/), a design professor and author at the Maryland Institute College of Art.
I’ve read a number of her books, which are all very design + DIY-focused, often featuring projects by her students, some of which are done with processing. her books are frequently about making things, e.g. her books “Indie Publishing”, “DIY Kids”, and “Design Your Life”.
Would be great to loop her into the processing.js work, at the very least.