Thank you Barcelona

Thank you, thank you, thank you Barcelona. MozCampEU was productive, insightful and (almost a little too much) fun. It helped me better understand the richness of community that has made Mozilla so successful in Europe. So much passion. So much hard work. Across so many cultures and languages. And, all with a deep sense of humour and joy. Really, it was magical to be immersed in this for two days.

I also came away with many concrete outcomes. Clearer thinking on how the Foundation fits into Mozilla 2010 goals. Strong lines of communication with Mozilla Europe board members. And fresh ideas for events that spread our values, dramatically expand our community and make it easier for people to participate in building a resilient open web. All of this is super helpful during a time where we’re shaping what the Foundation will do and be next. I am grateful.

There are already notes online from the various 2010 goal discussions. Tristan and I will clean these up and create a summary in the next few days. We’ll send this around in an e-mail to all who participated. Also, I’ll be posting more thoughts on some specific ideas about events and community, but probably not until after the Foundation team meeting that is taking place in Mountain View this week.

A whole day on teaching open source

Before jumping into MozCamp here in Barcelona, I wanted to hammer out a few reflections on the Teaching Open Source track at Seneca’s FSOSS conference. So, here it is:

What happened: Humph and Chris carved out a whole day of FSOSS to talk about open source education. We had panels with students, professors, college admins and open source community reps. All were talking about their experience with open source in the classroom and how to make it better. I am pretty sure there has ever been a gathering like this before.

Big personal learning: Riffing on a comment Shaver made on yesterday’s post, Humph and I got into a discussion about what’s made him successful, which then rolled into the discussion with the whole group. The nugget of truth: “I wanted to play developer. And Shaver wanted to play professor. It took both of us to make this happen.” Most of my past conversations about replicating Seneca have been about finding the ‘right professor’. The last two days have made be think we also need to be looking for the right Mozilla contributors to help out on the education front.

A little success story: While we have yet to see more Mozilla courses, Seneca has replicated the open source course model locally by adding courses with Fedora, Eclipse and Open Office. People from all these projects were there yesterday. And, like Mozilla, all would be happy to see open source courses at more colleges and universities around the world. I already knew this was the case through Dave and Chris, but it was a different thing to meet all these folks. Nice.

Some follow up stuff: There was general consensus amongst the 40 people in the teaching open source sessions that we need to see more cooperation in this space. As a starting point, people agreed that we should do a survey of who’s teaching open source well and write up some simple case studies. Zak’s already working on something like this. We could use it as the foundaiton of a broader community effort. There is also a loose interest amongst people like Red Hat and SFU of working on spreading the open source course model. Seneca is hosting a wiki for people who want to collaborate further and possibly build a coalition of folks working on open source education.

How do we grow the Seneca teaching model?

Frank, Humph and I had a good brainstorm yesterday growing the Seneca open source education model. For those who don’t know: Humph teaches a course where students learn software development by actively working on projects and bugs in the Mozilla community. Many people would like to see this model spread to more colleges and more students, but doing this is easier said than done.

Up to now, the assumption has been that we ‘need more profs like Hump’ if we want more Mozilla courses in colleges and universities. The breakthrough yesterday was that there may be other ways to grow the model:

1. Find More Profs Like Humph. Humph is an experienced Firefox contributor AND a full time computer studies prof at Seneca. The most straightforward way to grow the Mozilla@Seneca effort is to find other profs with both of these attributes. This is straightforward, but finding these people who is hard.
2. Lend Seneca’s (and Humph’s) Brain to Others. Professors at other colleges have expressed interest in teaching Mozilla, but they don’t have the Mozilla community experience or skills to do so. These profs could have their students participate in Seneca’s Mozilla course or could even attend themselves as a way to build up skills. Similarly, Seneca students who want to study things like Open Office could do so remotely with profs experienced in that community who teach at other universities (Eric Bachard is a prof in France already doing this).
3. Embed Mozilla Contributors in the Classroom. A Mozilla contributor with an interest in education could teach a course on the Seneca model alongside an existing computer studies prof. This hasn’t been tried yet, but it seems like a way that we might be able to build the combination of skills and connections that Humph has.
4. Find Mozilla Contributors Who Can Teach. It might also be worth looking for colleges that want to do open source courses, and then find Mozilla contributors who would be willing to work as a sessional prof (teaching just one course). This course could be run on the Seneca model.

This is very much fresh, unbaked thinking. Today’s Teaching Open Source track at the FSOSS conference in Toronto will help us poke at whether there is any there there. I just wanted to get them down quickly while there were on the tip of my tongue. David, Frank and I will likely be back soon with more reflections.

2010 goals: engaging a broader public about the open web

Ever since my first post about Mozilla, there has been a constant theme around getting more people to participate in efforts to make the open web stronger. I’m passionate about this, to be sure. But it’s not just me. Most people I talk to — inside and outside the Mozilla community — believe this is something we should focus on.

Given this, I have a strong feeling that there should be a Mozilla 2010 goal related to engaging and activating people around the open web. I think Mozilla Foundation should take point on this goal. What I am not sure at all about is how to frame it. It could be something like:

Develop simple, practical ways for more Internet users to actively contribute to making the open web stronger.

This goal makes sense at a high level. It’s the kind of thing people say when I get into conversations about ‘engaging a broader public’. But, when you dig deeper, the phrasing doesn’t do a good enough job articulating what we want to engage people around and why they would even care. The goal we set needs to do this.

Brian Behlendorf and I got talking about this engagement challenge the other day. As we wandered around it, we came up with a thought experiment where we’d ask people:

If you had space on a high profile site like CNN or BBC, what would you tell people about the open web? What conversation would you start?

Jay Patel and I recently had a similar line of conversation about the Mozilla Campus Reps program:

If Mozilla Campus Reps ran 1000 BarCamp-like events about the open web, what would the topic specific topic be? Who would show up and why?

I’m increasingly convinced that we need to dig into a couple of thought experiments like these before we define our goals for engaging a broader public about the open web. Here is my proposal on how to do this:

1. Ask the two questions above to as many people as you can over the next week. I am going to ask people at FSOSS and MozCamp Europe, and rope in a bunch of friends.
2. When you ask, encourage people to be both practical (what actually makes the open web stronger?) and realistic (what would attract people to get involved?) with their answers.
3. Forward this post to anyone else who you think would be willing to ask the questions above to people they know.
4. Use your own blog, post comments here or send me a mail with what you find.

I will post a summary of whatever people have written next Friday (Oct 31). I will also take a shot at one or more goals related to getting more people to participate in making the open web stronger. Make sense? If so, let’s jump in.

PS. Of course, I’ve got some ideas on the questions above. I think mobile offers a good entry point for broad public conversation about the open-web-we-have vs. the siloed-web-we-may-end-up-with. And, I think there is events about content creation, open content licenses and open standards might make sense for groups like university students. But my ideas aren’t the point. The point is to very widely brainstorm how we might engage people, and then go from there.

One month in, and blogging 2010 goals

It’s been four weeks since I started at Mozilla. The good news: everyone I’ve met has been amazing, and there’s enthusiasm for new Foundation efforts to improve and extend the Mozilla universe. The ‘what’s with the blog radio silence?’ news: I’ve spent alot of time with my head down on budgets, 2008 grants and generally understanding how things work. Interesting and fun, especially when fueled by amazing Toronto office coffee. However, not much brainspace for blogging.

My head is now up and spinning on the topic of Mozilla’s 2010 goals. Which, of course, is a fantastic topic to blog about. Specifically, I am wondering:

• How can the Foundation best contribute to broad Mozilla 2010 goals that are currently being discussed?

and

• Should we be setting out one or two goals that are (mostly) specific to the Mozilla Foundation?

The Foundation team and I will be digging into these questions over the next couple of weeks. We hope others will join in. If the enthusiasm I’ve seen so far is any indication, lots of people will get involved in this and the broader 2010 goals discussions.

These conversations are not starting from scratch. Mitchell has already talked about 2010 goals quite a bit. Also, many of us have discussed the role of the Foundation online and at Whistler. Based on these conversations, some things people seem to be looking for from the Foundation are:

• Promoting Mozilla’s values beyond our products.
• Helping ‘regular users’ participate and contribute to a strong open web.
• Strengthening links between Mozilla communities (e.g. projects using Mozilla platform).
• Explaining, sharing and promoting Mozilla’s unique way of working (e.g. community and hybrid organization).
• Carving out new territory. Thinking about what the open web needs to be in 10 years.

Given the amount of conversation so far, I suspect we can map these themes onto goals, and to test our thinking by brainstorming ideas about how to turn goals into action. It’s also important to double check to see if there are any major themes missing from the list above.

Process-wise, I plan to blog about a number of specific themes, with something coming later today on getting more people to participate in creating a strong open web. Other people from the Foundation will do the same. I’ll also be participating in a large discussion about Mozilla 2010 goals at MozCamp Europe next weekend. It’s likely there will also be a Mozilla-wide wiki to gather 2010 conversations. We’ll be summarizing Foundation discussions there once it’s up.