On October 25th, 2014, The Alternative Startup Experiment team took part in Mozfest 2014, where we acted as session facilitators. The team went there with a clear objective: to spread the word as to why we choose to work with Mozilla’s Open Badges, and to furthermore exemplify how beneficial the system can be to all those who implement Mozilla’s Open Badges. As well as this, the team was also enabled the opportunity to “learn, teach and collaborate”, which makeup three of The Alternative Startup Experiment’s basic principles.
You may be thinking, what is Mozfest? Mozfest is Mozilla’s annual festival, dedicated to forging the future of the open web. The three days of Mozfest largely consist of learning, teaching, coding, designing, and above all, sharing. So how could we at The Alternative Startup Experiment possibly fit into this event? At TheASX we believe in a different way of putting ideas into practice. As Open Badge issuers, it was important for us to share our experience with everyone interested in the Open Badges Lab track, which was one of the eleven tracks available during the festival. We wanted to show how this scheme, which we call “Alternative Startup Experiment” is feasible with the support of Open Badges.
So, what was our contribution to the festival? Our session ran on the Saturday, under the name “Take your Mozfest creations to the next level with Open Badges and The Alternative Startup Experiment”. We conceived this session to give those present at Mozfest, the opportunity to learn how we use Open Badges and to teach other startups how they can benefit from using this scheme.
Open Badges can be used to give recognition for the things you teach. Therefore, they also give recognition for the things you have learnt. This platform, launched in 2011, is gaining more and more momentum as it is being implemented in renown universities, as well as other learning institutions such as Smithsonian Quest TM | Digital Badging for the Classroom and Beyond. TheASX was founded under the idea of developing a new concept behind how Minimum Viable Products, also known as MVPs, are vetted and where experimentation is rewarded with Open Badges. Having developed a successful work scheme built over the Open Badge idea, we were invited to Mozfest 2014 with the idea of showing every aspiring entrepreneur how a startup could benefit from the Open Badge system.
As a new method to develop MVPs, we wanted to take the learning forward by supporting the creation of “alternative startups” and the logistics that comes with them. Overall, we are pleased to announce that our participation at Mozfest 2014 was a huge success. Not only during our session, but also during the rest of the festival, where we had the opportunity to show what we at TheASX do and how we go about doing it. Our balance is positive: we are sure of having inspired new entrepreneurs and of having taught them how things can be made in a different way. We are also sure of having contributed to the mission of spreading the knowledge about Open Badges, which we consider the future of how learning will be accredited.
To learn more about The ASX and the Open Badges scheme, please, visit
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