We are all citizens of the web
November 10, 2014 § 1 Comment
Ten years ago today, we declared independence. We declared that we have the independence: to choose the tools we use to browse and build the web; to create, talk, play, trade in the way we want and where we want; and to invent new tools, new ways to create and share, new ways of living online, even in the face of monopolies and governments who insist the internet should work their way, not ours. When we launched Firefox on on November 9, 2004, we declared independence as citizens of the web.
The launch of Firefox was not just the release of a browser: it was the beginning of a global campaign for choice and independence on the web. Over 10 million people had already joined this campaign by the time of the launch — and 10s of millions more would join in coming months. They would join by installing Firefox on their own computers. And then move on to help their friends, their families and their coworkers do the same. People joined us because Firefox was a better browser, without question. But many also wanted to make a statement with their actions: a single company should not control the web.
By taking this action, we — the millions of us who spread the software and ideas behind Firefox — helped change the world. Remember back to 2004: Microsoft had become an empire and a monopoly that controlled everything from the operating system to the web browser; the technology behind the web was getting stale; we were assaulted by pop up ads and virus threats constantly. The web was in bad shape. And, people had no choices. No way to make things better. Together, we fixed that. We used independence and choice to bring the web back to life.
And alive the web is. For all 2.8 billion of us on the web today, it has become an integral part of the way we live, learn and love. And, for those who think about the technology, we've seen the web remain open and distributed — a place where anyone can play — while at the same time becoming a first class platform for almost any kind of application. Millions of businesses and trillions of dollars in new wealth have grown on the web as a result. If we hadn't stood up for independence and choice back in 2004, one wonders how much of the web we love today we would have?
And, while the web has made our lives better for the most part, it both faces and offers new threats. We now see the growth of new empires — a handful of companies who control how we search, how we message each other, where we store our data. We see a tiny oligopoly in smartphones and app stores that put a choke hold on who can distribute apps and content — a far cry from the open distribution model of the web. We see increased surveillance of our lives both by advertisers and governments. And, even as billions more people come online, we see a shift back towards products that treat people as consumers of the digital world rather than as makers and as citizens. We are at risk of losing our hard won independence.
This is why — on the 10th birthday of Firefox — I feel confident in saying that Mozilla is needed more than ever. We need great products that give people choices. We need places for those of us who care about independence to gather. And we need to guard the open nature of the web for the long haul. This is why Mozilla exists.
Just as we did 10 years ago, we can start to shift the tide of the web by each and every one of us taking concrete actions — big or small. Download the Firefox 10th Anniversary release — and then tell a friend why Mozilla and Firefox still matter. Grab a colleague or a parent or a kid and teach them something about how the web gives them independence and choice. Or, just watch and share the Firefox 10 video with friends (it's really good, honest :)). These are a few small but meaningful things you can do today to celebrate Firefox turning 10.
Putting the web back on course as a force for openness and freedom will require much more than just small actions, of course. But it's important to remember that the global community of people who installed Firefox for others — and then talked about why — made a huge difference when Mozilla first stood up for the web. We moved mountains over the past 10 years through millions of people taking small actions that eventually added up to a groundswell. As we look today for new ways to shore up our independence on the web, we will need to do this again.
Th 10th Anniversary of Firefox is a day to celebrate, no doubt. But today is also a day to deepen our commitment to choice and independence — to stand together and start sharing that commitment with everyone around us.It is a day to show that we are citizens of the web. I hope you will join me.
Things I'm thinking about
June 3, 2014 § 3 Comments
I'm in one of those 'need to get back to blogging' modes. Thinking about a lot of things. Feeling too busy to blog. Waiting until I have the perfect thing to say. Which is always a bad sign.
So, to get the juices flowing, I just decided to make a list of things I'm thinking about. Here it is:
1. Connecting open mobile <-> local content <-> web literacy — we we need to make progress on all three of these things at once if we want the web to be a serious player for the next few billion internet users. I'm working up a project on this topic with Ben, David and others.
2. Building a web literacy mentor community that scales — I'm excited about Maker Party, but also worried we'll see post-campaign drop off again this year. We need a more systematic mentor program that grows, gets better and keeps people engaged 365/days a year. I'm helping Michelle and Brett think about this.
3. Figuring out the connection between an open internet and a fair internet. This a tricky. We assume an open internet will unlock opportunity for the billions of people coming online over the next few years. But it could just as easily lead to digital sweatshops. My new friends Chris and Brooke got me thinking about this in April. And I haven't stopped thinking about it since.
4. Finding the right balance between clear goals, working across teams and distributed leadership. If I'm honest, we've struggled with these things at MoFo for the last 18 months or so. Our recent all hands in San Francisco felt like a breakthrough: focused, problem-solvey, fast moving. I'm thinking alot about how to keep this feeling. Working with Gunner and a bunch of other people on this.
5. Pushing on the Hive Lab concept. Some of the best Webmaker ideas — and much of our new Webmaker 'textbook' — come from the educators, designers and programmers we work with in Hives. However, we haven't really figured out a way to systematically support and invest in this 'lab' side of Hive. I've been working with Claw and others to see how we can do more here.
6. Raising money. I'm always thinking about this, so it's on my list. Right now, I'm thinking about major gifts, which is an area we've never cracked. IMHO, breaking through in this area is critical if we want to build Mozilla into a 100 year org that withstand the ups and downs of the market. I'm starting to talk to Geoff about this. Also, looking for outside people to help.
7. Linking Maker Party and net neutrality. Alot of the issues that Mozilla cares about are hard for people to get their heads around — net neutrality, DRM, etc. We should be able to use our web literacy work to help with this. I've been talking to Dave, Amira and others about building a 'net neutrality teach-in' campaign into Maker Party as an experiment in making this web literacy <-> big-hairy-internet-issue link.
8. Talking about LEGO some more. Specifically: how the LEGO Movie has a bunch of corny-but-useful metaphors for how screwed the Internet is right now. And how we can't rely on a single here (e.g. Mozilla) to save the day. Spoiler: I'm going to use some LEGO Movie clips in my Knight Civic Media Conference talk later this month.
Random. I know. But these are places my brain is right now. A little scattered. But all feels juicy, good, important. Will write in more depth on some of these things soon.
Happy birthday world wide web. I love you. And want to keep you free.
March 12, 2014 § 10 Comments
As my business card says, I have an affection for the world wide the web. And, as the web turns 25 this week, I thought it only proper to say to the web 'I love you' and 'I want to keep you free'.
From its beginning, the web has been a force for innovation and education, reshaping the way we interact with the world around us. Interestingly, the original logo and tag line for the web was 'let's share what we know! — which is what billions of us have now done.
As we have gone online to connect and share, the web has revolutionized how we work, live and love: it has brought friends and families closer even when they are far away; it has decentralized once closed and top-down industries; it has empowered citizens to pursue democracy and freedom. It has become a central building block for all that we do.
Yet, on its 25 birthday, the web is at an inflection point.
Despite its positive impact, too many of us don't understand its basic mechanics, let alone its culture or what it means to be a citizen of the web. Mobile, the platform through which the next billion users will join the web, is increasingly closed, not allowing the kind of innovation and sharing that has made the world wide web such a revolutionary force in in the first place. And, in many parts of the world, the situation is made worse by governments who censor the web or use the web surveil people at a massive scale, undermining the promise of the web as an open and trusted resource for all of humanity.
Out of crisis comes opportunity. As the Web turns 25, let us all say to the web: 'I love you' and 'I want to keep you free'. Let's take the time to reflect not just on the web we have, but on the web we want.
Mozilla believes the web needs to be both open and trusted. We believe that users should be able to control how their private information is used. And we believe that the web is not a one-way platform — it should give as all a chance makers, not just consumers. Making this web means we all need access to an open network, we all need software that is open and puts us in control and we all need to be literate in the technology and culture of the web. The Mozilla community around the world stands for all these things.
So on the web's 25 birthday, we are joining with the Web at 25 campaign and the Web We Want campaign to enable and amplify the voice of the Internet community. We encourage you to visit www.webat25.org to sign a birthday card for the web and visit our interactive quilt to share your vision for the type of web you want.
Happy Birthday to the web — and to all of us who are on and in it!
ps: Also, check out these birthday wishes for the web from Mozilla's Mitchell Baker and Brendan Eich.
pps: Here's the quilt: the web I want enables everyone around the world to be a maker. Add yourself.
MoFo 2014 plans
January 14, 2014 § 2 Comments
I'm excited about 2014 at Mozilla. Building on last fall's Mozilla Summit, it feels like people across the project are re-energized by Mitchell's reminder that we are a global community with a common cause. Right now, this community is sharply focused on making sure the web wins on mobile and on teaching the world how the web works. I'm optimistic that we're going to make some breakthroughs in these areas in the year ahead.
Last month, I sat down with our board to talk about where we want to focus the Mozilla Foundation's education and community program efforts in 2014. We agreed that two things should be our main priorities this year: 1. getting more people to use our learning tools and 2. growing our community of contributors. I've posted the board slides (pdf) and a screencast for people who want a detailed overview of our plans. Here is the screencast:
If you are just looking for a quick overview, here are some of the main points from the slides:
Over the past 5 years, MoFo has successfully built Webmaker, Open Badges and other community programs to compliment our work on Firefox, FirefoxOS and other products.
In 2013, MoFo generated $13M in revenue and gathered thousands of community members and contributors around these programs.
In 2014, MoFo's goal is to improve and scale our education and community initiatives by:
a. Growing the number of contributors working on Mozilla initiatives like Webmaker, Open Badges, Open News, etc. to at least 10,000.
b. Driving adoption of Webmaker and Open Badges, with a particular focus on getting our tools into the hands of many more teachers and evangelists.
Our key strategy for doing these things is to identify and work with 'lead users' across all our programs in 2014. Lead users are people who are already enthusiastic about what we're doing.
I talked alot about lead users for Webmaker in this post back in September. These people play a key role in testing, building and promoting our education and community programs alongside us.
In 2013, MoFo aims to generate at least $17M in revenue to support this work. We are projecting expenses of approximately $18M, over $1M of which are covered by grant revenue we received in 2013.
In addition to these slides, you can also find detailed workplans for Webmaker, Open Badges, Open News and other MoFo initiatives on the Mozilla Wiki.
At the Mozilla Summit, we imagined a bold future 10 years from now: one where the values of the web are built into all aspects of our connected lives and where the broad majority of people are literate in the ways of the web. In this world, Mozilla is a strong global movement with over a million active contributors.
We move towards this world by building real things: a widely used mobile operating system based on the web; new ways to store and protect personal information online; content and tools for teaching web literacy. I'm excited working on the education and community sides of all this in 2014 — I think we can make some breakthroughs.
As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts on our plans and the year ahead, either as comments here or by email.
Who wants to teach the web?
September 19, 2013 § 16 Comments
People who teach others about the web are key to the future of Webmaker — and maybe even the future of Mozilla. I'm not talking only about teachers in classrooms getting their kids into HTML. Although that's part of it. I'm talking about anyone who a) is excited about the culture and technology of the web and b) wants to help others get more out of the web they create and communicate on everyday online. We've been calling these people 'mentors'. But, more simply, they are people who love the web want to share their passion.
In my recent post on Maker Party, I asked 'how do we build a global community of mentors?' One of the first steps is meeting these people, figuring out who they are and what they really want. We've been doing that all summer with Maker Party. And I did a bit personally as I traveled around over the earlier this month. Here are a few of the mentors I met.
Rafael, curious.
Rafael is an IT consultant who used to be a teacher. He knows the web and a little programming. He came to our Manila Maker party just to find out what was up. He ended up winning the 'best make' contest with a Thimble comic strip remix. At the end he said: I want to show this to some of the teacher friends. We pointed him to Webmaker.org/teach and told him local MozReps would be in touch. Rafael is the guy with a tshirt over his face.
Joe, learner turned mentor.
Joe is an high school student in the UK. He first got turned onto Webmaker at MozFest 2011. He liked the idea of teaching his less geeky friends about web programming, so he organized a Summer Code Party in 2012. This year he was helping as a Webmaker mentor at Campus Party in London. Joe is also active with DeCoded, an other London tech education group. Joe is the guy in the foreground with the white mentor shirt on.
Abdul, teacher.
Abdul is an IT teacher in a high school in Surabaya, Indonesia. He helped us organize a 100 person all day Maker Party in the school auditorium. He teaches HTML and PHP using notepad already, but wants a way to get kids more excited about those technologies. The two pane Thimble editor plus having his kids hack our animated GIF postcard template seemed like a good start. Now he wants to offer Webmaker activities regularly at his school, although would find it easier if there was content in Bahasa Indonesia.
Youth IT Clubs.
In Surabaya, I met with a bunch of high school IT clubs: after-school groups led by the the IT teacher. In the case of Abdul, he recruited his club to run our 100 person Webmaker event. And wants to help them learn to be leaders and teachers themselves by involving them in ongoing Webmaker programs. We already have a great example of working with youth in this way as part of our relationship with MOUSE via Hive NYC.
Lewie, youth mentor activator.
Lewie is in his early twenties. A few years ago, he didn't know how to code. Now he teaches corporate execs about programming for Freeformers. He also helps find other young people who he can train up and do the same. This is part of Freeformers effort to get young talent creating more young talent, using a 1:1 business model where corporate training funds more training for young people from unlikely backgrounds. The Freeformers have been active users of and contributors to Webmaker. That's Lewie on the right.
Michelle, partner in crime.
Michelle runs developer relations for one of the two big mobile operators in the Philippines. She is also a great friend of Mozilla's. She regularly offers event space for things like Webmaker events. And, at the Maker Party, stepped up in real time to offer a small cash prize for the best make. It's win / win for sure: her company is positioned as part of our effort to build young web talent at little cost. But, there is more there. Michelle is personally excited about what we're doing. This offers a great deal of validation and motivation to both the mentors and the learners in the room. That's Michelle on the right.
Kindred spirits and partners, more broadly.
A core idea behind Webmaker is being a big tent for anyone who wants to teach the Web. It's about finding kindred spirits who want to teach alongside us. The three fellows above are from the local robot hacker community in Surabaya. They came to help with our Hive Pop Up. We worked with dozens and dozens of partners like this as part of Maker Party this summer including Code Club, National Writing Project, Technology Will Save Us, Young Rewired State and all of the members of our Hive Networks. I'm going to do a separate post on partners, but they are a key piece of building a mentor network in their own right.
Benny and Yoe One, Super Mentors.
Benny and Yoe One are dedicated Mozilla volunteers who live in Surabaya. They don't just work on Webmaker. But they have been incredibly active. They organized the Maker Party and Hive Pop Up in Surabaya. And, more importantly, started to build relationships with dozens of schools and local government to create interest in what we're doing. They are 'Super Mentors' in our parlance: people who have the skills to teach but also want to help us bring in and train more mentors. Obviously, these people are absolutely key to the success of our Webmaker effort. Benny is to the left and Yoe One is to the right of Abdul.
Faye, Webmaker country lead.
Faye is a university student in Manila and a Mozilla Rep. She is also the official Webmaker Country Lead. The MozReps in the Philippines have created lead positions like this for many Mozilla programs to make sure someone is a driver. Being Webmaker Lead means Faye not only organized the Maker Party I was at in Manila but is also thinking strategically about how to improve Webmaker and how to get it out of Manila into remote regions. She is like a Super Mentor with a more official role within the local reps community. We may want to consider having this kind of 'lead' role in other countries or other cities. That is Faye in the Firefox shirt on the right.
Bob, Jun and Viking, the elders.
In many countries around the world, Mozilla is lucky to have a community of elders. People who have been a part of the Mozilla community since very early on. A number of these people have been critical in getting Webmaker going in their countries, encouraging other community members like Benny, Faye and Yoe One to get involved. These people also could (and should) play a key role in defining where we go next with Webmaker and how it ties into the rest of Mozilla's work. This is a picture of Viking. Bob and Jun are on the right in the picture below.
The posse.
Finally, a key part of the picture is what I just call 'the posse'. These aren't mentors per say, although they do often pitch in teaching at Maker Parties. They are active Mozilla community members working on a variety of things who are willing to help their peers who are running Webmaker activities. I found them in all three cities I visited. This is the awesome posse holding fort at the registration desk at our recent Manila Maker Party.
As you can see just from my handful of examples, these mentors (sic) are quite diverse. But they do have things in common. They are passionate about the web. They want to teach or share what they know about the web in an active way. They want to be part of what Mozilla's doing, either on the face of it or because the big tent brings people to their own teaching programs. And, across the board, they are simply generous and enthusiastic people who want to make the world better for the people around them by sharing the web.
At this stage, these mentors are the most critical audience for Webmaker. This is in part because they are the ones who get it and like it: they are in a great position to help us test, iterate and build it out further with community contributions. But it's also because they will bring in the next round of web makers. Each mentor who uses Webmaker.org will bring 5 – 50 more users as a part of the teaching they are doing. Summed up: growing our mentor community will both make Webmaker better and grow our user base. IMHO, we should be putting most of our efforts right now on making Webmaker better for — and with — mentors.
Mozilla Maker Party: a global lab
September 11, 2013 § 5 Comments
Over the last three months, Mozilla set up a global lab. It's called Maker Party. And its goal is to do real world experiments that invite people to teach, play with and test the thinking behind Mozilla Webmaker. This lets us learn and improve as we go. In this post I outline the questions we're asking. In follow-on posts, a bunch of us will look at what we're learning.
What are we trying to test? At the broadest level, we want to test the idea that we can teach the culture and technology of the web to large numbers of people by tapping into maker culture and people's desire to create. More specifically, Maker Party is asking:
1. How broad is (web)making? What do people want to make and learn?
The Webmaker program is a big tent: we support people who are teaching the culture and technology of the web no matter what tools they are using. Maker Party events reflect this, with people teaching everything from HTML to robots to paper prototyping. On the other hand, Webmaker.org is currently focused on Mozilla's tools. Maker Party helps us ask: What do people most want to make and learn? What's our relationship to the broader maker movement? Depending on the answers, do we expand the scope of Webmaker.org? How?
2. Does our 'making as learning' approach work? Does it draw people in?
We built Webmaker.org with the theory that people will learn how the web works fastest and best if we invite them to make something that delights them and that they are passionate about. The starter makes, new UX and the increased focus on remix that started to appear in Webmaker in June are all based around this theory. Maker Party helps us test this theory, both by seeing which aspects of the tools / content / site people were most drawn to and by asking mentors 'what do you think people are learning?'.
3 What value can we provide people who want to teach the web?
People who want to teach others about the web are our first target for Webmaker. Spanning everyone from English teachers to web developers to teens who want to show their friends something cool, these are our 'lead users' They're willing to kick the tires to help us improve. And they help us grow by bringing in more users (the people they want to teach). They are key to our early success. The question for Maker Party: What motivates these people? What value can we provide them? What can our tools, content and community offer to them that they can't find elsewhere?
4. Can we grow our reach by working with partners?
Partnership has always been a core part of our 'big tent' approach with Webmaker. For Maker Party, we signed up dozens of partners to help us in the lab (and to run great programs for young people. They include: National Writing Project; Code Club; New York Hall of Science; Black Girls Code; Girl Scouts of America; MIT; California Academy of Science; E-Skills; Pycon Canada. Maker Party helps us ask: What motivates these partners? What value add can we offer to the programs they are already running? Are they helping us grow our reach and impact? Are we helping them do the same?
5. How do we build a global community of mentors?
One of the key goals of Maker Party is to grow and strengthen a lasting community of Webmaker mentors. With this in mind, we designed multi-step process that included: 1) recruiting and teaching mentors (Teach the Web MOOC); 2) offering a Mozilla Mentor badge to create a sense of belonging; 3) supporting mentors as they ran Maker Parties; 4) celebrating the best mentors; and 5) creating an ongoing mentor program for people to join post campaign. The questions for the lab: What parts of this worked? Do people want to stay involved? What does a formal 'program' for mentors look like? What content, infrastructure and staff do we need?
With over 1,000 Maker Parties under our belt, it's time to start answering these questions. We have a great deal of real world experience and feedback to throw against the questions above. We also have a slate of formal user testing feedback on webmaker.org that we're rolling into the design. And we have a growing network of excellent mentors who can help us both reflect and design next steps.
For my part, I'm going to write up reflections on Maker Parties I attended in the UK, the Philippines and Indonesia over the past week. People from across the Webmaker team will also be doing their own posts. And we may do a survey of Maker Party organizers based on the questions above. This will feed into how we evolve both the Webmaker program overall and webmaker.org.
If you've been involved, I encourage you to do your own reflections. Blog. Tweet using the #makerparty hashtag. Post in the Webmaker mailing list. We've all got a to playing in making Webmaker better.
Coming out of my (blogging) shell
September 8, 2013 Comments Off on Coming out of my (blogging) shell
I noticed with a titch of horror last week that my last post on this blog was in May. Well, maybe horror is wrong. Embarrassment.
Why embarrassed? Blogging is one of the things I do to work and live out in the open. It's essential as a way to explain the things I'm working on at Mozilla so others can understand and contribute. Also, if you like collaborating with people, it's just good form to be transparent and show what you are thinking as you move through life trying to get things done.
Mitigating the embarrassment factor: there was a method to my silent summer madness. I've been spending the last few months focused on supporting others on my leadership team and on framework ideas to help us all as we go to the Mozilla Summit. Still, I didn't expect to go dark for so long.
As of today, I'm back at blogging. My first priority is to look back at the Mozilla Maker Party campaign that the Webmaker team has been running all summer. Will put up a first post on that tomorrow. I also want to start writing about the Summit and some thoughts on where Mozilla might head in the future. Lots of thinking and typing ahead.
Mozilla and Badges: where next?
May 20, 2013 § 3 Comments
Open Badges started as a modest experiment: build open source badge issuing software for ourselves and others. As momentum around this experiment has grown, it feels like the opportunity is bigger: we could build openness and user empowerment into how learning — and professional identity — work all across the web. With Open Badges 1.0 out there in the world, now is the right time to ask: where next for Mozilla and badges?
When Mozilla and MacArthur Foundation first started work on Open Badges about 18 months ago, the plan was to build a badge interchange standard (like SMTP for skills) and a collection of open source software for issuing and sharing badges (Badge Backpack, Open Badger, etc.). We've built all these things. And we've put up a reference implementation that Mozilla and others are using. This was really the limit of our original plan: build some basic open tech for badges and put it out there in the world.
The thing is: there has been way more excitement and pick up of badges than we expected. Even though Open Badges only launched officially in March, there are already over 800 unique providers who have issued almost 100,000 badges. We are also starting to see the development of city-wide systems where learners can pick up hundreds of different badges from across dozens of learning orgs and combine them all into a single profile. Chicago is the first city to do this (June 1), but Philadelphia and San Francisco are not far behind. And, this is just the tip of the iceberg: orgs like the Clinton Global Initiative and the National Science Foundation are focusing on badges in a way that is likely to drive even more educators to pick up the Open Badges standard, making their badges interoperable with others.
Of course, the fact that educators and policy makers are interested in badges doesn't represent a victory in itself. It just shows momentum and buzz. The real opportunity — and the real impact — comes when learners and employers get excited about badges. Mozilla never planned to build offerings for these audiences. Increasingly, it feels like we should.
In the Internet era, people learn things online and out of school all the time. Whether you want to make a web page, knit a sweater or get better at calculus, the internet makes it easy to learn on your own or with a group of friends outside of a school setting. However, there is no good way to get credentials or recognition for this kind of learning. And, even if there was, there is no trusted, verifiable way to plug that recognition into Facebook, About.me and other places that make up your online identity. People have no good way to show 'what they know' online.
Similarly, employers are increasingly turning to the internet to find talent. They use sites like LinkedIn that let you search online resumes. Or, increasingly, to sites like Gild and TalentBin that use data mining to find potential hires. The problem: these services do not offer granular or variable skills profiles. And, with some of them, there are significant issues around privacy: people are being offered up as potential hires without even knowing that these sites are collecting data about them.
Mozilla could offer a distributed, open source and privacy-friendly solution to problems like these. We could help learners show their skills in all their online profiles and also help employers search for talent reliably. However, to do so, we'd have to build a Firefox-quality offering for learners and employers on top of Open Badges. While this hasn't been our focus up til now, I'm thinking more and more that this is something we should consider.
In some ways, there is a parallel to Gecko and Firefox. Gecko provides the underlying platform for shaping standards around our vision of the web. But we need a popular consumer offering like Firefox if we want this vision to actually become relevant in the market. Right now, with Open Badges, we're mostly just playing at the underlying standards layer. If we really want to shape how learning and professional identity work on the web, we probably need to build our own offerings directly for the people who most want and need badges.
Now is the time to be looking at where the opportunity is in this space. Momentum and demand is amongst educators is growing. More and more start ups are appearing in the badges, portfolio and skills spaces. And likelihood that badges will be important for learners and employers is growing. We need to be asking ourselves: how can Mozilla — and its values — shape this space?
With this in mind, Erin Knight is leading an effort over the next few months to look at different badges product options. She'll be providing updates on her blog. And I'll be summarizing here as well. If you have ideas on where Mozilla should go on all of this, we'd love to have you involved as we think this through. Comments here on this post are a good place to start.
Maker Party: let's spark a movement
May 7, 2013 § 2 Comments
Plans are coming together for Mozilla's Maker Party 2013. And I'm getting excited. Last year's party had people making things on the web at 700 local events in 80 countries. This year it'll be bigger. But, more important, I think this year will plant the foundations for something that lasts well beyond the campaign: a movement of people who want to teach 10s of millions of people how the web works.
Mozilla has built this kind of movement before: when we first launched Firefox. Many people just downloaded Firefox 1.0 because it was great. But others became on-the-ground evangelists and promoters. They told their friends about Firefox. They installed it on other people's computers. They showed them how to use bookmarks, and pop-up blockers and add-ons. And, over 10,000 of them of them put up money to tell the world about Firefox in a historic two-page Sunday New York Times ad.
In my view, the mentors and local champions who will step up to organize the Mozilla Maker Party are just like the early enthusiasts who helped Firefox get to 500 million users. It's these people who will show the first million Webmakers what they can make. Who will start awarding badges that reward people for their skill and creativity on the web. And who will create excitement about all the tools and programs across the web the empower people to make and create. These mentors and local champions are the core leaders that Mozilla needs if we want to teach the world the web.
Building on last year's successful Summer Code Party, Maker Party 2013 has a number of pieces designed specifically to help mentors and local champions succeed. Five that I'm really excited about are:
1. Teach the Web: a nine-week free and open online course for people who want to be Mozilla mentors and local champions. It's highly collaborative, convening nearly 3,000 participants to share their teaching practice, learning materials and learn to hack the web on the way. The course started last week, but you can still sign up here www.webmaker.org/teach
2. Super mentors: these are the passionate volunteers who really make the online course and marquee Maker Parties happen. They are experienced in teaching the web, running events and creating teaching materials. Starting with their work on Teach the Web, the Super Mentors are the leadership core of the larger Webmaker Mentor community. We already have over 100 super mentors. We hope to have many more by the time Maker Party 2013 is done.
3. A big tent with more than 40 partner organizations joining the Maker Party and carrying out making-and-learning activities across the globe. Like Mozilla, these organizations are part of a growing movement to teach the web and promote the maker spirit with hands-on learning. This network of partners is critical to growing this movement: there is no way any one organization can do this on its own. Mentors can bring their own organizations into this tent as a way to get publicity and recognition, or just as a way to be part of the party.
4. Hackable Activity Kits: simple 'instructables' that you can use show people how to make web pages, Popcorn videos, etc. The guides are hackable, forkable HTML pages so you can customize them. OpenMatt explains these kits well in this post.
5. An improved webmaker.org: We're launching some new features on webmaker.org June 15 to designed for making and learning on the web. Not only have these tools have been designed with mentors in mind, we'll also be taking mentor feedback and improving them on a constant basis.
While the Maker Party campaign runs from June to September, Mozilla's hope is to build a lasting network of people around the world who want to teach people how the web works. In September, we'll be inviting mentors and local organizers to stay involved in Webmaker. This will include invites to MozFest 2013 in London this October, opportunities for continued online mentoring and local organizing and a chance to help shape where we take the Webmaker mentor program in 2014+. In many ways, Maker Party is a kick off for these lasting activities.
If you are someone who wants to teach the world how the web works — or even just show a few people how to get more creative online — you should get involved. You can start by joining the Teach the Web course or just signing up for Maker Party 2013 updates. Also, start thinking about what you might want to do in your town or city in the coming months. Getting people excited about the web is actually pretty easy. And fun.
5 great things about Webmaker v2
April 25, 2013 § 7 Comments
A better picture of Webmaker v2 has snapped into focus over the past few weeks. The current plan builds on the 'Webmaker as a popular way to make and learn on the web' vision we set out in December. What's clearer now is our focus on people who already take photos, blog and create online: we give them new ways to make, remix. and improve their craft. We also them access to mentors committed to helping others learn how the web works.
In this post, I wanted to pull out my top 5 list of things I'm excited about in Webmaker v2:
1. Rebooting the brand to focus on makers of all ages
Cassie, Kate, Chris and others already working to reboot the Webmaker brand and UX to really emanate the maker spirit.
The idea is to appeal to teens and above, not kids. Also, to target people who already 'make' in some sense. You can see hints of this in their early mockups.
2. Building a gallery to show all the awesome makes
The biggest gap in Webmaker v1 was the lack of a gallery where you can see what people made. Fixing this is the top priority for Webmaker v2.
The site will lead with tiles of the best things people have made. More importantly, the site will be filled with all sorts of different galleries: makes that teach you how to make a similar thing; makes you made; makes on specific themes; makes that are actually curriculum materials.
3. Creating a Make API so anyone can make a gallery
In related news: we've started work on a 'Make API' that will let anyone pull a slice of Webmaker content to create their own gallery or service.
At the simplest level, this is a win as it gives us a common publishing model for both Thimble and Popcorn. But, in the long run, the Make API could be something more radical: it's way for people to store, describe, slice, dice and share any blob of HTML from across the web. Ultimately, it could help people to take control of all the things they make online, no matter where they've made them.
4. Deepening learning w/ challenges + badges
Webmaker v2 will include peer reviewed badges based where: 1) we describe a skill; 2) someone submits something they made that demonstrates that skill; 3) a peer or mentor reviews the submission and awards the badge (or not).
This is exciting because a) we can badge for skills defined in the Mozilla web literacy standard and b) people can submit 'makes' made with any tool (e.g. Scratch). This second piece is essential if we want to open things up widely on the making as learning front: people don't just want to make things with Popcorn and Thimble.
5. Making it easy to make hacktivity kits using Thimble
For Webmaker to succeed, we need any mentor in our network to be able to write or remix Hackable Activity Kits.
Currently, that's difficult as our learning materials are all hard coded web pages that need someone with commit privileges to check in. We're going to change this by making it possible to create these kits directly in Thimble and then creating a special gallery for these pages. The result: a constantly updated community run gallery of learning materials.
These 5 things — and everything in the Webmaker v2 product vision — represent a big leap forward. When we started 2013, we had a fragmented offering with no single sign on, no gallery and no publishing model. We're moving to a place where we not only have a unified offering but also something that is flexible in terms of how people publish and how they learn. New features and improvements will roll out weekly over the course of the summer, starting June 15. If you want to track progress on Webmaker v2, follow this scrumbug and this Tumblr blog.
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