TLDR: "MozFest 2024 is focused on Solidarity. We are hosting MozFest House in The Netherlands & in Zambia in 2024. And will be hosting virtual events every month to gather with the global community."

2024 is urgent. 83 elections will be taking place in 76 countries. Ongoing global conflict and warfare will continue to impact the climate, increase loss of life, and fuel divisiveness. This year promises to be one of the five warmest years in history. The widening gap in access to the internet and new technologies is deepening inequality, particularly in the world's most vulnerable areas. Artificial intelligence (AI) will impact 40% of global employment on top of the existing precarious labor conditions. The emphasis on AI and its stake in these issues is ever more pressing, and we need to tackle them in connection to one another.

Sustaining Political Power, Urgently, Deliberately

In 2024, we are emphasizing our togetherness. This year, we are reminded of the importance of gathering together, working alongside each other in solidarity, and leveraging collective global efforts to impact change on a local level. Mozilla Festival will concentrate on bringing people together in key locations, and virtually, to develop and strengthen relationships and create sustainable political power.

In 2024, together, we will imagine a better future that is full of opportunity and abundance. To do so, we need to stand against unfair treatment in our communities and around the world. We need to stop putting money and machines ahead of people and the environment.

In 2024, together, we will work locally and globally to move policy decisions, technological tools, and economic infrastructure toward collective well-being. We must all work in sync to rewrite the rules for AI. We must be critical about who is building technology and who are they building it for. We must advocate for better legislation, create reliable and open technology solutions, support communities as they manage their own data, and encourage efforts to repair and restore the environment.

MozFest 2024: IRL & Virtual

Gathering, online or in-person, is a political act, an exercise of will – a desire to be connected to one another in thought, experience, and practice. Because we can’t shift the status quo in isolation. And we can’t shift it in a vacuum.

We need context – and place is context. To understand just how interconnected our technological tools and decisions are, we need to zoom in regionally, we need to think locally. We need to begin with the nuance of place.

And we need community. MozFest Houses are regional invitations for folks to bring their work within the context of place, culture, and lived experience. This year, we will be hosting two MozFest Houses in person in The Netherlands in June, and in Zambia at the end of the year.

We will also be hosting monthly virtual events for our global community to exchange perspectives, address ethical considerations in products, explore data practices from different parts of the world, share research, and experience art projects. So that as we focus locally, we do so in concert with our global community.

The Mozilla Festival is the space where we gather to sustain each other as we push and pull towards a shift in political consciousness for a technology landscape, and world, that aligns with us and our planet. It will be the physical and virtual terrain where we reclaim the internet, together.