Introduction to Wrangling

While Mozilla provides a basic structure, resources, and support, the festival is essentially designed and produced by volunteers — teams of educators, activists, engineers, artists, and researchers who care about the open web and a healthy internet.

Onboarding & MozRetreat: The Journey Begins...

The Wrangler Onboarding and MozRetreat experience lay the groundwork for positive, effective collaboration in the months to come. Our aim is for wranglers to discover synergies, affinities, moments of inspiration and energy with others in the cohort, and begin to build relationships that support strong, highly engaged teams.

We start this experience with the WHY: for each wrangler, what is their motivation, their vision? And from there, what can they design together that’s reflective of them, their work, their communities.

This year, we hope to gather safely in person in a city in the UK or Europe to begin the process, sometime in September or October, location and dates TBD. Mozilla covers basic travel and lodging expenses for Wranglers attending the retreat. For those unable to travel, we’ll work to bring their presence into the IRL (in real life) event and integrate those Wranglers into teams and the process. In the event that travel is not possible, we’ll move to an all-virtual format.

Smiling wranglers gathered around a table at MozRetreat 2018 in Einhoven, NL
wranglers gathered around a table at MozRetreat 2018 in Einhoven, NL


A the Retreat, incoming Wranglers...

  • Get to know and learn from each other.
  • Unpack the current challenges to the movement for internet health and trustworthy AI.
  • Learn about Mozilla’s work, goals, and resources.
  • Find ideal collaborators and form well-balanced, diverse teams.
  • Learn about the co-design phases and process to come.
  • Begin to develop themes (or Spaces) for our call for proposals
  • Explore options for Experiences, or engagement or mode-based offerings for MozFest

Wranglers close out this experience with a new set of collaborators and friends, and a team of typically 4 to 5 others they’ll work with for the duration of the process. They’ll also leave with a sense of the direction of the festival, where their skills and affinities fit in, and next steps in the process.

From the retreat onward, it’s not about what Mozilla wants for the festival... it’s about what this particular group of Wranglers wants to create, and how they’ll engage with broader communities to bring that vision to life.

In the spirit of inclusivity and interdisciplinary collaboration, anyone can submit under our CFP. One doesn’t need to be a tech expert or influencer to run a MozFest session. Each year we have roughly 500 session Facilitators delivering in an incredibly rich, varied experience for participants—in the form of workshops, games, art installations, discussion groups, and much more.