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.