Moving to Mozilla

It’s official: I will be joining the Mozilla Foundation in late September to take on the role of executive director.

I am totally psyched about this. Mozilla is a new kind of foundation, one with with participation, transparency and innovation at its very roots. It’s not just about giving out grants or making bold statements (although these are useful things to do), but also about getting large numbers of people involved in making things. In particular, things that make the Internet more open. For someone obsessed with reinventing how foundations work, there could be no more exciting job than this.

Of course, I am also a wee bit sad. Moving to Mozilla means leaving my Shuttleworth Foundation and telecentre.org work behind. The people at these two organizations have inspired and challenged me in the most wonderful ways possible. More importantly, they’ve proven to me that little changes to the way we work – like blogging about stuff that normally gets stuck in internal reports – can really help to open up the work of grant making and world changing. My hope is to stay connected to all of these people as an informal advisor and supporter.

Between now and September 22 (my official start date), I will have my head down finishing up my work on the Shuttleworth open philanthropy file. I’ll also be running Open Everything events in South Africa, Canada and Singapore. My mind is already spinning with thoughts of Mozilla — I’ve been talking to people in the Mozilla community about the foundation for many months now. Even so, I really need to take this time to make sure these things all wrap up properly. Once they’re done, I’ll dive head first into Mozilla work, including the continuing conversation about the future of the foundation. I can’t wait.