Back to the Beginning
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"When a job went wrong, you went back to the beginning. And this is where we got the job. So it's the beginning, and I'm staying till Vizzini comes." — Inigo Montoya, The Princess Bride Screenplay by William Goldman
Being a part of Mozilla over the last three years has been a humbling experience.
When I started with the project, I imagined great personal success. Like a happy little worker bee flitting from Free Software flower to Free Software flower, I would cross-pollinate Mozilla with PHP's community savvy and pragmatism, MySQL's disruptive innovation canny, and the Free Software Foundation's dedication to their mission and service ethic to Free Software developers. Mozilla would be better, stronger, faster (and, by happy side-effect, I would be a hero.)
Instead, I've experienced a mix of tepid success and equally tepid failure in my Mozilla Foundation work - the sparks I strike never seem to make it into full flame. While I'm proud of my Age of Literate Machines work, it's still just a spark.
If you had asked me why this was a year ago, I probably would have told you that it was because I worked with world-changers - people who've helped build the foundations of the net, people who've stood up to powerful governments, people who've helped build things that are the foundations of parts of my life - and that it is difficult to be a peer in this group.
Reflecting on this after the last three months of personal and organizational soul-searching, I think that the key reason being a part of Mozilla is uniquely humbling is that we have a massive constituency and want to effect global change across the breathtaking complexity of the net. To make meaningful positive change at this scale requires deep clarity of thought, a singular purpose and a lot of luck. I've had the luck, but to get to where I must be I need to go back to the beginning.
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Posted on Saturday, December 27th, 2008 at 12:12
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December 29th, 2008 at 20:46
[...] « Post 2 | This is the 3rd post in my MoFo Futures 2009 blog series. [...]
January 12th, 2009 at 13:11
[...] Back to the Beginning - Reflecting on the last few years and gearing up for 2009. (Written during this week.) [...]