Mozfest, or the Mozilla Festival, is an annual "future of the web" festival, which this year will be on October 25 – 27 in London. I went last year and this year Public Lab will be taking a more active role, hopefully running at least a session and possibly having a booth in the Science and the Web area. Anyhow, I proposed 2 sessions, so check them out, and (if you can?) vote for them!

Hello world, spectrometry edition: build and take home a working open source smartphone spectrometer

Learning Lab: The Public Lab community has produced a number of prototype open source scientific instruments aimed at making environmental science more accessible. Learn to build a papercraft spectrometer, calibrate it, and detect chemical signatures with your smartphone, while learning more about how the open Public Lab community develops and improves these nascent tools.

Open source science: not just for scientists

Design Challenge: Open source hardware and software promises to democratize scientific inquiry like never before, breaking down cost and expertise barriers. Let’s brainstorm the kinds of technologies which, while taken for granted by scientists, can bring about deep changes in how people understand the world. The idea of a personal computer was once as alien as the idea of a personal spectrometer; in this session, participants will explore how real world problems can be addressed by in-the-home open science.