Why Mountain Moot Is More Than Just a Conference: Reflections on Mountain Moot 2024
Held Wednesday, July 17 through Friday, 19 in Helena, Montana, the 14th annual Mountain Moot offered over 40 sessions, hands-on training, and numerous social events. As the longest-running Moodle™ conference in the U.S., the event has become one of the premier gatherings for instructional designers, educators, and training specialists regardless of the learning management system they use. Open LMS sent a team that included Jeremy Schweitzer, Trevor Havey, Krista Fernandez, and Amy Tessitore. In this article, Amy talks us through the highlights of the event and reveals why Mountain Moot is more than just a conference.
From leveraging collaborative and innovative spaces, to ensuring ample time for socialization and learning, this year’s Mountain Moot may have been the 14th edition, but it was as fantastic and impactful as the previous nine I had attended. This was thanks in no small part to organizers, Dan Case and Rachel Martin and their team of volunteers.
Mountain Moot is more than just a conference; it’s a community.
A community so strong that conference attendees stay in contact throughout the year, providing insight, support, and encouragement. The spirit of collaboration and overall willingness to share knowledge and everything learned in the past year is one of the hallmarks of the open-source community—and it’s the foundation of Mountain Moot.
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Some Highlights From Mountain Moot 2024
This year’s Moot featured a healthy mix of sessions and was preceded by a full day of pre-conference workshops aimed at the full range of attendees: from brand-new users to seasoned admins, instructional designers, and developers. A similarly well-balanced offering of sessions followed in the conference proper, with topics such as AI, development, instructional design, learner engagement, promotion, retention, and personalized learning. Moot has really hit the right balance of session length and variety—and the speakers always bring a high level of value and experience to their topics.
Audience participation remains a huge part of Mountain Moot. Sessions are usually shaped by the audience and the questions they ask, creating a highly personalized experience for all skill levels. There’s also a rich vein of gamification running through the event in the form of MootBucks and Moot Coin. These conference currencies can be earned during the event for asking great questions, tweeting notes about a session, or otherwise just helping others and engaging with conference activities. Though the currencies have no cash value, attendees can use them to spend big during a special conference auction on the second evening—more on that later!
As ever, the Open LMS team was able to connect with many of our clients, helping us make invaluable in-person connections and strengthen relationships that had previously only been over email. Overall, we noticed that there were a large number of first-time Moot attendees this year—a great sign that the number of Moodle™ admins continues to grow!
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The Social-First, Fun-Loving Open-Source Community
One of the most valuable aspects of the Moot is the social time built into the schedule. This is when Mooters get to connect with others in similar fields and with similar interests. It’s an opportunity to broaden horizons and let creative ideas flow free. It’s not unusual for people to band together to start new projects, solve problems, and think about ways to increase their positive overall impact on the learning community.
The conference experience was undoubtedly enhanced by the location. The event was hosted at the tech-forward Carroll College campus, in its newly renovated library building. The campus itself enjoys a breathtaking backdrop in the form of Montana’s iconic Big Belt Mountains. Overall, it was the perfect place to reconnect, relax, unwind, and learn!
While everyone was eagerly sharing and learning during the day, their competitive spirits were ignited when earning MootBucks during the conference, and during the annual game night. Attendees could be found trading commodities over a rambunctious game of pit, or trying their hand at lawn games such as kubb and cornhole. As ever, the night culminated with both a silent auction and a live auction, where participants could win amazing prizes donated by different sponsors. This year’s big-ticket items were a Goonies movie-themed swag pack, Bluetooth speaker, and a games console.
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In Conclusion: Another Great Year at Mountain Moot
Mountain Moot never fails to bring together experts and novices as a community dedicated to furthering open-source LMSs, innovating in teaching and learning, and advancing education and training throughout the world. To say we’re excited about attending the 15th Moot next year would be an understatement—we can’t wait to share what we’ve learned, connect with community members, and brainstorm new and interesting solutions with everybody once again!
