In Three Months, We Helped 58,000 People Teach and Learn the Web.

On June 15, Mozilla kicked off Maker Party — our flagship Webmaker event and a three-month long global celebration of making and learning on the web. Buoyed by the success of last year’s Summer Code party, we tried hard to make this year’s global celebration of webmaking even bigger and better. And thanks to the incredible work of Mozillians and party hosts around the world, it was!

Maker Parties were held in 330 cities across the globe. Some places, like Abidjan, Cote D’Ivoire, held their first ever party, while others, like New York City, threw more than 400 separate events!

As we reflect on the feedback from this year’s event, here are some themes that emerged:

Tools

Popcorn Maker projects proved to be our most popular tool, and more than 35,000 Popcorn videos were created. Thimble was a hit as well, and more than 15,000 webpages were created or remixed with the easy-to-use tool.

“Popcorn is particularly useful for kids who only have access to computers at school or the library, because you don’t need to download or pay for software – as long as you have an internet connection, you can use Popcorn.” — YWCA Toronto Girls’ Council Maker Party in Toronto, Canada

Curriculum

Teachers and mentors discovered ingenious ways integrate Maker Parties into their curricula. Even more exciting, they collaborated and created informal networks to help others teach the web.

“Stéphanie [a teacher] explained to me what she wanted to do and asked me whether Popcorn could do it. And it could! She was really happy to see it would be so easy, nothing to install, no matter if she was using Windows or Linux. She’s a teacher and she already plans to show Webmaker to her colleagues and her pupils.” — NightScience Maker Party in Paris, France

Community

Many event hosts were not formal educators. By connecting with other web enthusiasts eager to share skills, Maker Parties were a great way to gain experience and form networks.

“During my first class, I was kind of nervous, but my students were awesome. They really loved the innovation experience that we shared together. I really felt it was a learning and teaching experience for all of us.” — Virtual United Maker Party in Chicago, USA

Joy

We heard over and over how much fun people had at this year’s Maker Party. Collaboratively exploring coding and learning to make and share things on the web proved to be an engaging, joyful process for people across the globe, regardless of their skill levels.

“At the end of this session, I asked an attendee what he thought of learning collaboratively and he said “I spent half the session teaching that other guy in CSS, and it was so much fun.”” — OHM Festival Maker Party in Alkmaar, Netherlands

Continuity

We’ve been flooded with requests to keep the party rolling and we’re happy to reassure eager makers that the fun continues at webmaker.org. You can inspect and remix any webpage with the X-Ray Goggles, create and share your own webpages with Thimble, and remix web video, audio and images into cool mashups with Popcorn. You can also connect with other mentors, find teaching resources and use event guides to host your own party.

Get Involved:

• Explore fantastic Maker Party on webmaker.org.
• Check out the event map to see what’s happening next in your hometown.
• Become a web mentor and share you skills with others.