With only one day left of the festival, we’re reflecting on all of the incredible, inspirational sessions, experiences, and conversations that have happened on day 3 and 4 of MozFest 2023. You can also catch up on what happened on Day 1 & 2 here.

Here’s a few highlights of the over 140+ sessions that were on the schedule over the last 2 days:

Energy of the Collective with AI Cosmologies

Participants gathered together in a fun, cosmic, virtual space created in Mozilla Hubs to learn about what astrology is, how the birth chart serves as a celestial, energetic, blueprint for our individual personalities, and what the 11th house in particular means within our natal charts.

Dialogues & Debates: Making the Fediverse

Mozilla is joining the Fediverse in 2023 to co-create its future. Moderated by An Xiao Mina, Senior Civic Media Fellow at the USC Annenberg School for Journalism and Communication, this inspiring panel featured

• Steve Teixeira, Chief Product Officer at Mozilla Corporation
• Anouk Ruhaak, Digital Governance Researcher and Designer
• Tarunima Prabhakar, Researcher and Co-founder of Tattle
• Darius Kazemi, Senior Software Engineer at Meedan and works on federated, decentralized social media

An Xiao expertly moderated this discussion around what a decentralized fediverse could look like, what values this fediverse could and should embody, and the role of communities. The panel covered topics ranging from content moderation, trust and safety, and the role of plurality.

Watch the recording to explore questions such as: What are its greatest opportunities and limitations? How can we scale methodology and not solutions? What is the public discourse square of the future? Who is building it?

MozFest Science Fair

The MozFest Science Fair is one of experiences that has remained constant for years, although it has morphed and changed over the years. Since our festival has moved to the virtual stage, the Science Fair has been hosted in Mozilla Hubs. This year, the MozFest Science Fair theme explored AI Anthologies and how society has come to rely on AI-based, data-driven interventions to address social issues. From an AI-musement Park to a Fungi-sea, from virtual hallways displaying projects and artwork to a Temple of the Muses, the Science Fair got us out of the normal “virtual” experience and into something new.

Talkoake

Talkaoke is a fun free form talk show, with no set agenda, where the online participants decided on the direction of the conversation enhanced by visualisations and sound effects! The host started with an opening question: “how do we decolonise net culture?" and participants navigated the conversation together to imaginatively explore what decolonisation of the internet could look like, including how to create fairer revenue streams for artists and the creatives around the world, especially from the global south.

Sip N’ Paint

Artist Obsidian Circus provided MozFesters with a series of A4 line art images inspired by our MozFest 2023 Space and Experience Narratives and Icons for participants to get creative with. Participants doodled, painted, colored, got messy with oil pastels, and embraced the freedom of their own expression in this fun session.

Dialogues & Debates: A Conversation with Angela Davis and Christian Smalls

This was an incredible session that brought together iconic activists - Angela Davis, who has decades of political activism experience, and Christian Smalls, who founded the Amazon Labour Union in 2021. The session was moderated by J. Bob Alotta, VP of Global Programs at Mozilla who expertly weaved together the common threads in both panelists’ advocacy journeys.

Watching the two generations of activists share their wisdom with one another was a beautiful reminder of how movement building is an ongoing process rooted in community. Angela put it best when she reminded us that all individuals are products of our communities, and asked us to imagine what it might mean to live without the influence of capitalist individualism.

Stories Are Our Algorithm: Emerging Tech & Collective Power

As part of our Parables Experience, transmedia artist Stephanie Dinkins joined musician Toshi Reagon together in conversation with a special kind of kinetic energy. The discussion flowed between topics on family archives, AI, Technology, Water justice, and Lauren Olamina, the Octavia E. Butler's Parable series protagonist, and roled as a wave!

MozFest Ambassador Hour

Did you know that MozFest has an Ambassador program?!?!

MozFest Ambassadors are a small group of internet health advocates and loyal MozFest community members who are committed to bringing MozFest to their part of the world, through their networks and connections.

Our MozFest Ambassador Hour featured Craig Steele, Anastasia Karagianni, and Sadik Shahadu and their inspiring work towards making our digital world a better place.

What else happened at MozFest?

With over 420 sessions happening over the week, it’s impossible for anyone to catch every sessions. But the over the last two days, as a community, we:

• Built a network to report about climate crisis with the Biotech & Diversity Space.
• Cooked spicy cauliflower florets (yes, you read that right!) with Allies in Practice.
  United with digital content creators on the AI-algorithm revolution with the Humans Behind the Machine Space.
• Prepared the next generation of technologists with the MoZone.
• Strategized for LGBTQ social media safety with the Utility of Transparency Space.
• Asked ourselves “to trust, or not to trust” social capital with the YouthZone.
• Ponder a paradox that haunts the open ecosystem with the Autonomy & Governance Space.
• Attend an Intelligent (AI) game jam with the MoZone.
• Guessed which song snippets are written by AI with the Human Behind the Machine Space.
• Explored how to love, and be loved by technology with AI Cosmologies.
• Reimagined a classic play, Copenhagen 1941, with the Allies in Practice Space.
• Played a Digital Rights Monopoly game with the Education & Access Space.

Secure your ticket before the final day and get on-access demand to all of our recorded sessions!