Advancing the Mozilla Manifesto
Most regular readers of this blog are familiar with the Mozilla Manifesto and with the work that the Mozilla Corporation undertakes to advance the manifesto. It is good work. Actually, it is great work from a great community of people. However, the corporation focuses most on Firefox and the related software and communities. The manifesto is much broader in scope than a small set of products and communities, no matter how important these things are.
Lately, I've been thinking about how we can work on supporting the other parts of the manifesto – figuring particularly in our thoughts have been the ideas that the manifesto (and by extension the activities related to the manifesto) needs to speak to people whether or not they have a technical background and to provide a framework for other people to advance this vision of the Internet. Also, it seems that our pledges to promote models for creating economic value for the public benefit and to promote the Mozilla Manifesto principles in public discourse and within the Internet industry.
With this in mind, I've started looking for small projects to develop that:
- follow the methods and principles of the manifesto
- help realize the goals of the manifesto
- have easily measurable results
- produce good social returns on our investment
Projects should:
- be performed in a visible and transparent fashion
- create lasting positive change
- generate re-usable materials
- (if community projects or volunteer-driven projects) help sustain the individuals who participate in the project, as well as the larger communities that the individuals are a part of.
- be partially or completely self-funding
Early projects should:
- generate measurable and meaningful results within three months
- help us develop processes and experience for future projects
We already have some candidate projects in mind – I'll write more about these in the future. In general, I'm looking for projects in the following areas:
- educational institutions (or publishers) that wish to develop their curriculum in the topics of open communities, open innovation, open source, Net-based open content distribution, etc.
- helping specific groups solve key problems that are also our concern. For example, the Center for Social Media has done a brilliant job carving out additional space for fair use and free speech with their use resources for documentary filmmakers and has provided filmmakers with tools to help solve a critical problem for them.
- market trends that can be addressed using methods that meet manifestation criteria
- non-profit organizations who wish to expand their public good activities to the Net
While working on the early project, we should be doing research for the overall project plan. Here are some things we should likely undertake.
- Source or commission interviews with different types of netizens to better understand their view of the Net and themselves on the Net.
- Commission a Mozilla community census to help us understand who we currently serve and what they expect from us.
- Study the methods and effects of other market-shapers such as Amazon, Craigslist, Creative Commons, Flickr, Google, Goldcorp, OpenCourseware (MIT), Wikipedia, etc.
- Review the activities of our broad peer group and their projects, such as Ashoka, Benetech, Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Center for Democracy and Technology, Chilling Effects Clearinghouse, Creative Commons, The Documentary Filmmakers' Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Electronic Privacy Information Center, Free Software Foundation, Grameen Bank, OPLAN Foundation, Software Freedom Law Center, Software in the Public Interest, Sunlight Foundation, TheyWorkForYou.com, UK Citizens Online Democracy, etc. We want to benefit from their experience and to tailor our activities to be more effective. Researching these groups will turn up many others and provide a greater understanding of the broad space we are in.
- Review key movements of concern to us, such as anti/pro-DRM, anti/pro-software patent, anti/pro-spam, copyfight, free software/open source, net neutrality, online privacy, security, …
- Review key trends (such as peering, open innovation, citizen journalism, blogging, social networking, lifehacking, etc.) in relation to the manifesto.
- Seek researchers working in the area who can share research and reduce our effort. Publish our research, so as to enable others.
As measuring is key, here are a few quick thoughts on measuring and measurements:
- Internet Search Visibility: We should create project names and links that are easy to track via internet search engines. This allows us to easily see the spread and discussion of ideas, news, resources, etc.
- Funding: The further we extend our funding (within the constraints of our criteria) the better. I'd like to be able to offset at least 20% of the budget for each project with external funds.
- People directly affected: We can measure how many people are affected by the outcome of the project and how significant the effect is.
- etc.
My thoughts are still rough in this area – feedback is much appreciated!
Link Summary
- http://www.mozilla.or...ozilla-manifesto.html
- http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/
- http://www.centerfors...sources/fair_use/fair
- http://creativecommons.org
- http://ashoka.org/
- http://benetech.org/
- http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/
- http://www.cdt.org/
- http://www.chillingeffects.org/
- http://creativecommons.org/
- http://www.centerfors...g/resources/fair_use/
- http://eff.org/
- http://epic.org/
- http://fsf.org/
- http://www.grameenfoundation.org/
- http://www.oplan.org/
- http://softwarefreedom.org/
- http://www.spi-inc.org/
- http://www.sunlightfoundation.com/
- http://theyworkforyou.com/
- http://www.ukcod.org.uk/
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Posted on Monday, February 4th, 2008 at 4:29
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February 5th, 2008 at 6:51
Really wonderful blogpost, Zak! Let us know what Berkman can do to help :-)
-Amar
February 5th, 2008 at 13:45
Thanks Amar! I'll definitely take you up on the offer. :) –zak