Mozilla Festival 2016

Les Pounder travels to London for MozFest and in the shadow of the O2 Arena finds a unique building housing the future of the open web.

DORINE FLIES

Linux Format: Please can you tell the readers a little more about yourself and your involvement with MozFest?

Dorine Files: I’m a mum, I work in HR for a cyber security company. I am the ‘space wrangler’, a producer for the Youth Zone. At MozFest, we typically have between seven and nine producers. Each space wrangler is in charge of the presenters and direction taken by their respective space inside the MozFest event. We undertake the majority of the logistical planning, scheduling and weave a narrative into each space; the narrative being the story or subject that we wish to share with our peers.

LXF: So who are ‘our peers'?

DF: Our peers are everyone who comes to the festival, whether that’s facilitators – those that come and lead sessions – or those that pay and take part in the sessions. Our peers can be a five-year-old child or an eighty-year-old— all that matters is what’s inside their heads.

LXF: You’ve mentioned that each space has a narrative—what’s the goal of the Youth Zone?

DF: Our narrative is ‘youth inclusion’, with the goal to nurture the talents of the next generation who will live in the world created today. It’s only fair that we include them in the conversation on how to build and shape the world in which they will live. A certain level of maturity is needed to understand how and why something should be changed for the social good, and the children in the Youth Zone have shown that they have that level of maturity.

LXF: The Youth Zone seems to be a key part of Mozilla Festival. How long has it been part of the event?