@KnightMozilla learning lab update: Seven days until liftoff

There are only seven days until the first Knight-Mozilla learning lab kicks-off.

Here’s a quick rundown of what’s going to happen this week:

• As of this morning, there are 55 participants registered for the learning lab. Later today Tomorrow, invitations will go out to five people who are on the waiting list to fill those spots.

• Once those last five spots are confirmed, a final list of learning lab participants will be published.

• Starting Wednesday, the preliminary course content will be uploaded onto the new P2PU.org platform, which includes a curriculum overview, lecture dates & times, assignment outline & schedule, and so on. The material will be accessible to anyone.

• Starting Thursday, we’ll be asking the P2PU team to create accounts for each of the lab participants, and registering those accounts with the course. If you’re in the lab, you should expect a password reminder e-mail that you can use to log-in to P2PU.

• On Friday, lab participants will receive the first welcome e-mail. It will include all the details for the lecture on Monday, July 11th, and a number of logistical details. If you’re in the lab, keep your eye out for that e-mail.

On Monday, July 11th, the lab will kick-off at 10AM Pacific, 1PM Eastern, 6PM British Summer Time, 7PM Central European Summer Time (if you live in another time zone, you can use this handy time-zone converter). Most lectures will be 2-hours earlier (8AM PT, 11 ET, 4 BST, 5 CEST), but we’ll start a bit later on the 11th to ease into things.

Before you ask, let me provide a few quick answers to questions that we’ve been receiving:

• Access to lecture material: All lectures will be recorded and available on P2PU publicly (to everyone on the Internet) as soon as we can get them posted. We’re hoping for video, audio, and slides, but it may just be audio with a link to the visual information that was presented. If you’re in the lab, you’ll be expected to attend the live lecture (unless you live very, very far east).

• Waiting list: If you haven’t received an invitation to the lab yet, you should keep an eye on your Inbox today. As mentioned, at some point today we’ll be inviting five more participants to the lab.

• Process: For the one or two that asked about process, it’s quite simple … there’s a process overview here. The lab is the second part of this year’s program. Twenty participants in the lab will be invited to go to Berlin in September to build working software prototypes. Five of the people that attend the Berlin event will be invited to become Knight-Mozilla fellows.

Finally, I just want to publicly thank all of the individuals and teams that submitted entries to the challenge. If you weren’t one of the people that made it through to the lab, you should know two things:

1. The competition was very stiff for the top sixty positions in the list.

2. There will be another challenge next year. Start brainstorming early.

That’s it for today. More updates to come. Stay tuned.

UPDATE: My apologies, I forgot it was a holiday in the US today. The remaining invites will go out tomorrow.