Knight-Mozilla Ideas' Jam

An ideas jam took place at the Dundee Universities Students Association yesterday, with backing from internet giant Mozilla and the Knight Foundation.

The International design and technology workshop featured sessions and challenges designed to help students se their creativity to produce exciting ideas and applications.

Programme director Dr Jon Rogers said there were thousands of of designers from around the world desperate for an opportunity such as this. “Ideas are what defines the world” he said. “We can put creative arts and design alongside technologists and bring on some of the best ideas to be found around the world.”

The day kicked off with introductory talks from Joh Rogers (University of Dundee), Michelle Thorne and Desigan Chinniah (Firestarter, Mozilla Labs), Devon Walshe (Hack-Hackers Edinburgh) and finally Paul Egglestone (Digital Coordinator at UCLan’s School of Journalism, Media and Communication).

The morning was then followed by an exiting afternoon of ideas jamming where participants traded ideas for beer tokens. "Look how many beer tokens we won! #MoJo  http://t.co/DWw9CrG via @mikevanis".

Participants were set 3 challenges aimed at exploring the future of online journalism:

• Unlocking Video
• Beyond Comment Threads
• People-powered News

One of the highlights of the day came from a group of participants who took on the Beyond Comment Threads challenge. Their video 'Anatomy of a Comment Thread' illustrates the problems with the current commenting system found on my journalism websites.

Follow these awesome people on Twitter - @ileddigital, @thornet, @cyberdees, @devonwalshe and @digitaldocs

More on #MoJo can be found at: www.drumbeat.org/en-US/projects/mojo/