This is a guest post by David Bild, Educator, Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum. He was one of five Hive Chicago members to attend Mozilla Festival in London, and shared his experience and learnings with the network upon his return.

During #MozFest, I chose to follow The Science Track, which examined the potential of the open web to re-define how we experiment, analyze and share scientific knowledge; how the open web can help align scientific practices with scientific values. The sessions included technologists, open science advocates, developers, and educators sharing existing tools for collaboration and working to develop new ones, including Mozilla’s newest project: Science Lab.

Yet, the Science track was not only about how scientists collaborate. There was a focus on engaging the public in science in even more meaningful ways beyond simply data collection; involving them in posing questions, setting agendas, analyzing data, interpreting results, and applying conclusions.

Sessions in the Science Track

In Social monitoring of river basins: brainstorming the future of socioenvironmental conflicts, Mauricio Corbalán shared how Argentina’s Garagelab is using the Ushahidi Platform to merge publicly available data sets with community-generated data points. The timeline feature is particularly innovative. The session reminded me of the power of maps to tell stories and really got me thinking about what a Hive Chicago map(s) could look like: a Hive map for organizations to identify potential collaborations and geographic gaps, a youth-facing map to enable program/badge discovery, and youth-generated maps created through cross-program collaborative projects.

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