You expect this post on my Blog & not on discourse. But yes, after much consideration I’m opting to write here instead.
I’ve deleted contents (explanations, micro-topics, add-on examples etc.) like anything before posting the final version. I’d rather await for the questions, than preemptively answering/clarifying them.
Changes
The introduction of pathways’ concept to MozFest (to align and categorize contents) appeared as a gradual, obvious evolution, and not as a disruptive, complete mutation. May the lack of shock be intended. Certainly it helped the tracks in a good way, but there may be a lot of scope for more radical improvements on the same trajectory.
Internet didn’t fail horribly this year.
EVEN. MORE. FACILITATORS! Wanna see a graph/plotting of those numbers since 2010.
Cross-space interactions were bear minimum. People from one space (group/team/floor) rarely visited/participated actively in other spaces. I’ve only seen it gradually decrease over the last couple of years, albeit, the schedule app only got better. Perhaps each space found out how to be super-full of contents themselves to (be able to) explore.
Ravensbourne is still the best space to host something as crazy as MozFest. The floor-planning makes me fling my fist up and headbang! Everytime.
Suggestion
The turnouts from each sessions are becoming rather short-lived. Most of the time, once the session is over - it’s just over. The best effort to be made right now, is to share the facilitators/participants’ contact details to continue it afterwards (although there’s a pretty high communication barrier for it to happen, let’s say it does happen).
There’s NO way for someone who didn’t initially take part in the session to retrieve the context/discussion & be a part of it later on. This makes repercussion of MozFest to be of a rather less magnitude than it deserves to be.
I kid you not (if you haven’t been to MozFest yet), the amount of interesting sessions which are happening at the same damn time, are too damn high. And, I have no way to go and check the log, recording, video, transcription (OR ALMOST ANYTHING) to even know the summary of any discussion that happened. This makes me sad.
Can we PLEASE have a way to keep all the session notes, maybe audio, maybe pics, maybe videos, maybe webmaker makes, maybe a whole lotta other contexts added to the sessions, which are retrievable later on & keeps MozFest retroactive, years after years?
P.S: wrong place/set-of-people to hit this with. I know. Halp?
Session
My session had a total of 7 people (including Kaustav, as co-pilot), from all different backgrounds (from Economics professor to Entrepreneur of exponential technologies).
I had to turn the session from interactive to debating format on the fly in order to keep up with the maturity of the audience & their level of grasp on the topic. I love to host a session where I (quite literally) have to speak less than 20% of the entire discussion.
The session ended with getting our tables hijacked by the folks eager for the next session at that same place, and the participants proactively shared their details to continue the discussion, as they didn’t quite feel done yet with the topic. 
Participation
We had a good mix of content in our space. Skipping all the good parts and taking them for granted. 
I’m very much with the Friday’s introductory session with the other Participation Leaders, but not so much with the last day’s one.
If one needs to jump comically with a cape on to make a vow to write a blogpost, within a particular datetime and needs almost a fill-in-the-blanks sort of blogging format to be able to express one’s experience (and it doesn’t already happen naturally), that person sure needs time to be a participation leader.
In my mind, when we call it a leadership cohort, we don’t mean it’s a leadership nursery. Or maybe we do… that’s not yet clear to me.
!Fin
Let the discussion begin.
