About three weeks from now, Rickard Falkvinge (founder of the Pirate Party) will be kicking off the Vancouver Open Web Conference. He'll be presenting a keynote on how, in just three years, a party with an odd name organized around a narrow electronic frontier platform has become the fourth largest political party in Sweden. It's an amazing story that makes a good parable about how the world is changing and is a fitting start for a conference that we've (meaning mostly Jeff Griffiths, Malcolm van Delst, Mike Cantelon and Tim Whiteway) worked hard to make a careful balance of accessible, eclectic, relevant and useful.

In addition to Rickard, we're lucky to have a wide range of open web luminaries, local heroes and awesome hackers presenting, such as:

• Angela Byron of the Drupal community
• Ben Galbraith and Dion Almaer, Bespin hackers at Mozilla Corp.
• Boris Mann, from Bootup Labs
• Chris Messina
• David Ascher, CEO of Mozilla Messaging (formerly of ActiveState)
• Evan Prodromou, founder of Identi.ca
• Jacob Appelbaum of the Tor Project

As for topics, our speakers will cover a diverse range that includes Android development, engaging citizens via the Net, Drupal, iPhone development, Javascript, meditation, mobile web, Mozilla, MySQL, PHP,  privacy, Sita Sings the Blues, testing, Tor, web video for social change and a whole lot more.

If you are near Vancouver and are interested in the electronic frontier, free software/open source or the open net, then you should definitely register and attend - it's only $185 CAD for both days.

Despite the downturn, it looks like this is going to be a great year for the conference: 400 people have registered and the list of speakers is formidable, including: OSI board member Danese Cooper, FSFE founder Georg Greve, MySQL founders David Axmark and Monty Widenius and Zbigniew "Gandalf" Branecki from Mozilla Europe.

If you are in or near Romania, you should try to register and attend: it's only 39 EUR (19 for students) and is sure to be one of the best value IT conferences this year.

As a working group, we're spread across multiple locations and time zones, come from a variety of different corporate and technical cultures, and are accustomed to different collaborative tools and collaboration styles.

This makes for some interesting discussions about how to use various technologies.  I'll be sharing some of the discussions we've had and recommendations I've made, as they are likely to be interesting to people facing similar issues.

Our first major discussion was around wiki use. Wikis can provide a great collaborative space or they can become a dumping ground for lost ideas - it all depends on how well the wiki is structured, used and maintained.

I set up a wiki for the group shortly after we started working together. After about a week of us working via the wiki, discussions started to fragment across multiple channels - to follow up on a discussion, you'd need to read a string of email messages, look up notes from phone calls, read comments on wiki pages and review changes on wiki pages.

This lead to this recommendation:

I'd suggest that the group discuss mostly face-to-face, via voice and email.

When discussions move to the wiki, they tend to leave behind those who are less comfortable with wiki technology. Keeping up-to-date with wiki discussions means that extra burden is placed on both reader and author - either extra links need to be clicked, extra email needs to be sent or extra tools need to be installed.

Also, wikis used as discussion forums tend to grow into a state where a reader is never sure if information is up-to-date or canonical.

I don't think that there is any problem with putting a draft or strawman in the wiki and then encouraging people to iterate over the ideas using meetings, phone, email, etc. Editing can happen with discussion, but it is best to use discussion technologies (like email and chat) for the discussion and document management technologies (like wikis) for document management.

Good practice here is to incorporate cleaned and edited versions of the discussions as conclusions and agreements are reached.

For the curious, I used Deki Wiki Express. I like Deki for a lot of reasons - the ones that mattered most in this case were that it is extremely easy-to-deploy, is friendly for those new to wikis,  offers power tools for experienced wiki-ists, is Free Software/Open Source and has a decent upgrade path for either self-hosting or paid hosting.

Mozilla marked a major change for me. While I've worked on various electronic frontier, free software and open source projects over the last decade, working with Mozilla was the first time that I was able to focus solely on these issues without financial distractions. I still can't believe my luck.

I also can't believe that I'd ever want to stop being a Mozilla staffer. My colleagues are exceptional, the work is deeply rewarding, the Mozilla reputation opens most doors and Mozilla's lovely accountants are as punctual as the sunrise.

Still, that's where I'm at and, next Friday on March 13, I'm stepping down from my paid staff position.

When I started with Mozilla, I imagined that my passions and Mozilla's interests would align beautifully. It's never really happened and I've kept assuming that it would.

After the first year, I thought that I just needed more time to get comfortable and decided to be patient.

After the second year, I thought that I just needed more focus. I reduced my travel schedule, dropped a dozen other engagements (paid and volunteer) and worked almost exclusively with Mozilla.

After the third year, I thought that the Foundation team needed to be reinvigorated. Well, we've done that. Our little team is ticking along. Mark's been a great addition, David and Frank are both powering through their projects, and in the near future we'll have Gerv's full attention.

The situation couldn't be much better and it highlights the truth of what I felt at the beginning of my time at Mozilla - my passion is different than Mozilla's passion.

Accepting this difference, it's time for me to get back to working on my passions (and figuring out how to afford to do so.)

After reading this, it may surprise you to learn that I'll be continuing much of my Mozilla work as a volunteer, developing the ideas in the Age of Literate Machines, continuing the Mozilla Net Effects program and working on ideas for building a broad social movement around the Mozilla values. I'm passionate about all of these things and look forward to the freedom to work on these ideas without being concerned about the immediate return on time spend or how it looks to have a Mozilla staffer going out on a limb or a hundred other small distractions.

Wish me luck! See you on the other side of a paycheck. :)

FLOSS Foundations (http://flossfoundations.org) - an informal peer support group for people who administer Electronic Frontier, Free Software and Open Source projects and non-profits.

Idealist (http://www.idealist.org) - a site focused on helping individuals and organizations work together to better the world.

I thought that I had a few other links, but digging through my research notes, I'm only finding services that connect volunteers to non-profits or that help people self-organize.

The topic for discussion is, "How Can Mozilla Empower Nonprofits & Movements?"

To participate via chat, visit http://my.socialactions.com/events/how-can-mozilla-empower and RSVP.

Thanks to Joe Solomon for coordinating!

Translated from the Romanian, "The internet allows me to stay in touch with my friends from 10 years ago, to realize that we are the same losers and that I still love them just as much."

UX professional and blogger Gabriel Radic sent in a few warm and funny Romanian-language videos from Paris, France:

• The internet allows me to stay in touch with my friends from 10 years ago, to realize that we are the same losers and that I still love them just as much
• Thanks to the internet I've discovered many new music styles and learned too many useless facts about the crappy '90s music that I am still a fan of to this day

Advocate, consultant and neophyte Mandarin speaker, Stephen Walli added four interesting and creative videos to the Flickr pool - speaking Mandarin for one and changing in to his pajamas for another:

• I know exactly where I'm going
• I shop where I want when I want … even in my pajamas
• I easily stay in touch with friends, family, and colleagues around the world
• I study Chinese

Prague-based Mozilla hacker and brainy consultant Matthew Gertner revealed the secret to his success - money and the Internet in his three videos:

• Because of the Internet, I seem smart and knowledgeable - as long as I am sitting in front of a computer
• The Internet helps me stay in touch with people as they spread around the world. Because of the Net, I still have friends.
• Without the Internet, I couldn't do my job. Thanks for the money, Internet!

Many thanks to Gabriel, Stephen and Matthew!

Over the last four or five years, we've seen the interests of the core participants growing broader and broader. Where PHP used to be the key tool in our toolbox, platforms built on PHP (like Drupal) and other languages have grown to be of equal importance to many of us.

What has grown in importance over this time is the open Net. As our careers, our social life, our civic engagements, our finances and more - much of our lives - have become more and more enmeshed with the Net, our freedom is in some way predicated on its freedom. Even faithful PHP depends in part on the Net being free and open.

At our last board member meeting last year we discussed setting a new direction for the organization. We've been hinting at this for a few years through our Vancouver Open Web conference, but it is time for us to seriously start thinking about what we want to be as we move forward.

I've put together some brief and simple notes for the board on how I think we could move ahead and we'd love your input.

I believe that we need a few things to move ahead.

First, we should rough out a statement of why we exist, what motivates us and - at
a high level - what we hope to achieve.

Once we have a rough purpose in place, we should think about what principles we want for the organization. Our principles are the fundamental requirements for how we do things. A good way to suss our principles can be to complete this statement: "I would give others control of the organization as long as they …"

Once we've agreed on purpose and principles, we should brainstorm about how to realize our purpose.

The best and most achievable ideas from the brainstorm should be developed into goals we can measure against, and use to motivate and align with others.

After we do these things, we should review what we've got, polish into a coherent whole and then get busy.

Does this seem like a good process (GTD adherents are likely to recognise it)? Are there other proposals on moving forward?

Dear PHP,

There is something we've been meaning to tell you for a long time, but just haven't had the courage to.

It's over.

The monomaniacal fascination, the endless mailing list discussions and even the monthly meetings – it's all over.

We still love you. How could we not? For some of us, you were the first language that we programmed in and, for most of us, you were how we made our living for the late 90s and the early 00s.

Things are just different now. Our lives are tangled up in the greater space of the wide open Net. We aren't just web programmers and sysadmins any more. We're advocates and activists, writers and bloggers, platform maker and movement builders. We're the kids who went looking for the future of the Net and now that it's here, we need to get on with nurturing, building and living it.

We'll always love you, but our lives are so much more. You'll always have a place in our hearts, but as we grow you'll be just another important part of the platform that drives the open Internet.

<?php echo str_repeat('love', 1000001) ?>

Zak Greant, on behalf of the Vancouver PHP Association

Licensing and contract choices are often driven by fear and greed. We work, play, love and give in an environment where "How much profit can I make?" and "How can other people take the risks associated with my profit?" are the questions most often asked when working up legal agreements.

Further compounding this problem is the fact that lawyers profit off of the fear and entropy generated by complex and hostile legal environments - at least, they will until the system becomes unsustainable and collapses under a Himalayas-worth of contracts, precedents, book law, treaties and paranoia.

Free Culture, Free Software and Open Source licensing provide some antidote to this toxic environment, by providing terms that fairly balance opportunity and risk across the parties involved. Under these licensing scheme, each party has nearly the same set of rights and gets to behave much as if they own the work that is being licensed - under any of these licenses, I am free to make, modify and share or sell copies of the original work. The benefits of this are enormous and, at times, subtle. For example, when a work is licensed under a Free Culture or Free Software license, it makes it much harder and less economically viable to take the rights associated work from the original author at some point in the future.

Even though I deal with Free Culture, Free Software and Open Source licensing on a daily basis and my career was built in the PHP and MySQL communities, I still breathe in the general atmosphere of paranoia.

This is probably why I chose to require that videos be submitted to the Mozilla Net Effects video program be licensed under the Creative Common NonCommercial-ShareAlike license — I let my fear of someone misusing the videos outweigh the benefits from allowing commercial use. People with bad intentions will do bad things with the videos, often regardless of the license on the work. Preventing people who do create good in society from using the work in a broad way is just providing extra advantage to those who break the rules.

So, as soon as I go and edit the relevant wiki pages, I'll be asking people to choose Free Culture licensing for their videos.