I attended Mozfest in London at the weekend, at the suggestion of Beck Pitt from the OU. There wasn't a large contingent of educational technologists there (although I did bump into Maren Deepwell (who did an ALT-themed session with Martin Hawksey) and Josie Fraser). There really should be more educational technologists at this kind of thing - and the odd institutional manager ought to take note.
Not that there was much room - the place was packed, mostly with the young: the average age was about 20, and there was a very large and encouraging contingent of school age kids, getting wired-up on the decentralised web, blockchain, fighting surveillance and injustice, and feeding the world. There was a real buzz about the place.
MozFest took over 9 floors of the Ravensbourne college building opposite the O2. It felt like an occupation. I haven't seen anything quite like this since I saw the University of Amsterdam occupation in 2015 (see http://dailyimprovisation.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/in-light-of-recent-press-coverage.html)
There was a distinctly low-tech approach to coordination and organisation. Walls and stairwells were full of hand-drawn posters for different events and talks:
Future of scientific publishing? There was a clear technological move away from the established practices of publishers and institutions.
Worried about Fake News? What might technology be able to do about it?
I asked some of the people doing these things why they didn't just use the technology without doing all the practical badge-making, stamp printing, type-writing (yes, there was a typewriter!) stuff. The response basically pointed out the immediacy of experience, the importance of physical contact, and so on.
Whatever the reason, it was the right decision. The physical activities were a social and fun way of contextualising more complex technical discussions.
The most important technical themes were about web decentralisation. The drive for this is partly technical, partly practical (how to distribute internet access to parts of the world where building vast infrastructure isn't viable), but mostly political (fighting surveillance). It's not just Blockchain, but the Inter-planetary file system (http://ipfs.io), and a few similar decentralising protocols like DAT (https://datproject.org/).
The hardware to support decentralisation is also developing. The Gotenna device (see https://www.gotenna.com/pages/mesh) is a small radio repeater which carries a signal for 4 miles, and can easily form a mesh network with other Gotenna recievers in the neighbourhood. I found this incredibly exciting. Basically, we're heading for an off-grid internet.
As with all of these things, the question for an educational technologist is "What does this mean for institutions?"
The answer is, "We don't know", except that what it will spell out is "Change". The decentralised web is a threat to institutions. That's a message educational institutions need to hear right now, because they all are behaving as if technology has been "done", that it's all about MOOCs and the VLE and that all they need to worry about is "policy" with regard to technology.
Frankly, that's bollocks - ask any 14 year-old at MozFest!
Not that there was much room - the place was packed, mostly with the young: the average age was about 20, and there was a very large and encouraging contingent of school age kids, getting wired-up on the decentralised web, blockchain, fighting surveillance and injustice, and feeding the world. There was a real buzz about the place.
MozFest took over 9 floors of the Ravensbourne college building opposite the O2. It felt like an occupation. I haven't seen anything quite like this since I saw the University of Amsterdam occupation in 2015 (see http://dailyimprovisation.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/in-light-of-recent-press-coverage.html)
Future of scientific publishing? There was a clear technological move away from the established practices of publishers and institutions.
Worried about Fake News? What might technology be able to do about it?
Blockchain for bug fixing?
Google docs with IPFS?! Cool!
Whatever the reason, it was the right decision. The physical activities were a social and fun way of contextualising more complex technical discussions.
The most important technical themes were about web decentralisation. The drive for this is partly technical, partly practical (how to distribute internet access to parts of the world where building vast infrastructure isn't viable), but mostly political (fighting surveillance). It's not just Blockchain, but the Inter-planetary file system (http://ipfs.io), and a few similar decentralising protocols like DAT (https://datproject.org/).
The hardware to support decentralisation is also developing. The Gotenna device (see https://www.gotenna.com/pages/mesh) is a small radio repeater which carries a signal for 4 miles, and can easily form a mesh network with other Gotenna recievers in the neighbourhood. I found this incredibly exciting. Basically, we're heading for an off-grid internet.
As with all of these things, the question for an educational technologist is "What does this mean for institutions?"
The answer is, "We don't know", except that what it will spell out is "Change". The decentralised web is a threat to institutions. That's a message educational institutions need to hear right now, because they all are behaving as if technology has been "done", that it's all about MOOCs and the VLE and that all they need to worry about is "policy" with regard to technology.
Frankly, that's bollocks - ask any 14 year-old at MozFest!
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