Planet WoMoz

Congress is considering the most talked-about copyright legislation in a decade, known as Protect IP (PIPA) in the Senate and Stop Online Piracy (SOPA) in the House. Today, Mozilla announced that we’ll join with other sites in a virtual strike to protest PIPA/SOPA.

SOPA makes all of us potential criminals if we don’t become the enforcement arm of a new government regulatory and policing structure. SOPA does not target websites serving up unauthorized content. SOPA does not target people accessing those websites. SOPA targets all the rest of us. These costs are significant, wide-ranging and long lasting. To understand more clearly what SOPA does and the range of consequences, it’s helpful to use an analogy from the physical world where we all have many years of experience.

Assume there’s a corner store in your neighborhood that rents movies. But the movie industry believes that some or even all of the videos in that store are unauthorized copies, so that they’re not being paid when people watch their movies. What should be done?

SOPA/PIPA don’t aim at the people trying to get to the store. SOPA/ PIPA don’t penalize or regulate the store itself. SOPA and PIPA penalize us if we don’t block the people trying to get to the store.

The solution under the proposed bills is to make it as difficult as possible to find or interact with the store. Maps showing the location of the store must be changed to hide it(1). The road to the store must be blocked off so that it’s difficult to physically get to there(2). Directory services must unlist the store’s phone number and address(3). Credit card companies(4) would have to cease providing services to the store. Local newspapers would no longer be allowed to place ads for the video store(5). And to make sure it all happens, any person or organization who doesn’t do this is subject to penalties(6). Even publishing a newsletter that tells people where the store is would be prohibited by this legislation(7).

This is what SOPA and PIPA would impose in the online world. It’s very different than targeting the owner of the video store directly. The obligations to make websites hard to find apply to all citizens and businesses. Each one of us is subject to punishment and fines if we don’t follow these prohibitions. And, because SOPA/PIPA create a new regulatory structure, we become subject to punishment without the due process protections citizens normally enjoy.

Supporters say they are only targeting foreign websites outside US jurisdiction. However the burden of compliance that falls on all of us is not any less because the website servers are elsewhere. And in any case, many US companies with be affected through their locally-identified sites (for example, amazon.co.uk.)

Despite their over-reaching nature, PIPA and SOPA may not even be effective at stopping online piracy. People can still enter the actual Internet Protocol address of a blocked domain name. Sites can register new domain names. Continuously sanitizing the Internet of any mention or link to bad sites is a like the infamous game of “whack-a-mole.”

SOPA and PIPA are dangerous.  So, what to do?

Legislatively:

• Reject SOPA / PIPA soundly.
• Congress must not adopt the SOPA position of protecting content AT ALL COSTS. Congress must represent all of us.
• Focus specifically on the holes in today’s enforcement tools. Why are thePirateBay.ORG or MegaUpload.COM still operating? Why aren’t they part of the definition of “foreign site” in SOPA/PIPA?
• Be very, very cautious about creating new liability because we’re unwilling to punish the people accessing unauthorized content

Philosophically:
Over time, developments in two areas are likely to make this issue recede dramatically. One will be the development of new business models that embrace technology, and consumer expectations of universal access. The second will be new technology that makes it easier for content owners to limit access. Content owners can decide if they want unlimited audiences and alternative revenue sources, of if they want potentially limited audiences and a pay-for-view revenue model. Today we are fighting over what to do in the meantime. The content industry has convinced many that “something must be done.” Even if one agrees with this (which many do not), one thing is clear.

Protecting content at all costs is a disaster.

Our Internet experiences involve more and more data about us. Some of this data we create ourselves.  Sometimes our friends and acquaintances create it, and sometimes the services we use create data about us. On one hand this enables all sorts of exciting new applications. On the other hand, there are some very disconcerting aspects to the explosion of personal data. The ability of big data and cloud service providers to monitor, log, store, use, correlate and sell information about who we are and what we do has huge implications for society and for individuals.

Right now there’s no convenient way for me to share information about myself and maintain control over that information. I share information about myself by putting it someplace where someone else makes all the rules. That “someone else” is the application. Most people think of Facebook or Google, but this issue is much bigger than either of them.  This is an issue of the architecture of user data today, and applies across the Internet. Think of the big recommendation / review sites, or any other application you spend a lot of time living in. Think of any social network you’ve identified connections in. The only convenient way for us to have a “home” at one of these sites is to contribute our data and have whatever control the application developer chooses to give us.

These issues have big implications for Mozilla.

First, it means we should do some new things in the user data space. To really help people with the way we use and share data today, Mozilla will also need to offer people the choice of storing data in the cloud in a way that allows services to access it with your permission.  This will be a new thing for Mozilla. It will involve new challenges.  It’s important that we take these on and address them well. If we develop an offering that handles user data in the cloud properly we will help ensure choice and user sovereignty in new areas of online life. Each of us should have a meaningful choice about where and how our data is stored and managed. No other organization have both the ability to do something totally focused on user sovereignty rather than financial profit, and the ability to have wide impact. A Mozilla presence in the cloud will allow us to to fulfill our mission in important new areas of online life.

Second, this means our approach to handling user data must be different from the industry norm. It must put you at the center, array your data around you, and let you deliver that data to any app you want, on the terms you want. It should store user data when there is a measurable benefit to the user, rather than gathering everything in the hopes that data mining will provide value to someone else. It should allow people to determine if their data is available to others. The principle of user sovereignty will affect the way we design every aspect of our offerings.  Mozilla offerings must embody the values of the Mozilla Manifesto and our privacy principles.

My colleague Ben Adida (tech lead for identity and user data and one of our resident cryptographers) has written a piece describing our thinking on how to build such products.

(photo : Pandark)

Pour Michelle Thorne, alias thornet, la Culture (Libre) ça se partage. Elle participe à de nombreux événements et conférences dont tous les noms commencent comme par hasard par « Open » ou « Free », et tient un rôle dans plusieurs fondations parmi lesquelles Mozilla, Awesome et Creative Commons. Et comme si ça ne suffisait pas, elle (co-)écrit à propos du copyright, de la Culture Libre ou encore du Web Ouvert.
Elle travaille pour les Internets… d’abord comme International Project Manager pour Creative Commons, et maintenant Global Event Strategist chez Mozilla.
Elle organise des événements petits et grands, dont le Mozilla Festival depuis deux ans. C’est un plaisir d’avoir pour responsable cette jeune femme souriante et très sympathique.
Ses idées de partage et de création ne se limitent pas au monde virtuel d’Internet, Michelle aide à « chaordonner » le DMY Maker Lab et d’autres projets Do It Yourself, et réfléchit au partage des objets et des outils dans la vraie vie.

Bonjour Michelle !

For Michelle Thorne, aka thornet, (Free) Culture has to be shared. She takes part in a lot of events and conferences which names all begin with, how surprising, “Open” or “Free”, and she plays a role in several foundations including Mozilla, Awesome and Creative Commons. As if that was not enough, she (co-)writes about copyright, Free Culture or the Open Web.
She works for Internet … first as International Project Manager for Creative Commons, and now Global Event Strategist at Mozilla.
It organizes events large and small, including Mozilla Festival for two years. It is a pleasure to be guided by this smiling and very friendly young woman.
Her “Create and Share” philosophy is are not confined to the virtual world of the Internet, Michelle helps chaordinate the DMY Maker Lab and other DIY projects, and she ponders about the sharing of objects and tools in real life.

Bonjour Michelle!

One year ago I started the year with a big job ahead of me - build the user engagement team at Mozilla and grow direct relationships with 10+ million Firefox users.
2011 ended well, very well, I am delighted to say.

Socially speaking
With the help of William Reynolds, the first person to join the user engagement team in Nov 2010 we more than doubled the number of social connections on Facebook and Twitter last year. Today, over 7 million people are interacting with Firefox via their preferred social channel. William, our social expert led our sharing campaigns for the Firefox 4 launch with the Twitter Party and Facebook badges program. He also stood up our Army of Awesome Twitter support channel, relaunched the Firefox Live campaign, and too many other social engagement campaigns to mention here. William was a super intern at Mozilla in 2009, he’s now our super social man, who lends a hand to all folks on the team. You could say he has a lot more friends than any of us put together.

Email powerhouse
In mid January 2011 Winston Bowden changed his world and came West from North Carolina to head up and drive our email engagement program. Starting from virtually nothing Winston strategically grew our program whilst rolling up his sleeves every single day to grow the number of Firefox and You monthly newsletter subscribers to almost 3 million by end of 2011. Winston also spent much time helping nurture and grow other teams who communicate directly with their users, fans and developers via email. We’ve come a very long way under Winston’s tutelage. He has built a steadfast email program, that like our products, answers to no-one but you. We take engagement, privacy and the latest email best practices with regard to data incredibly seriously. And to all those marketeers out there — believe us when we say; not spamming, not heavy-handed targeting, not selling your customers data pays dividends. We respect our email subscriber like a family member or friend — and with often 20+% open rates and 8-10% click through rates, we have email numbers that are way, way above average. We’re terrifically proud of our program.

A is for advocacy
In early Summer, we had the great fortune to hire Chelsea Novak. Chelsea based in the Mozilla Toronto office had been working for the Mozilla Foundation in a fundraising and engagement role for 2 years when we had the great opportunity to have her join our throng. Chelsea was and is different. She understands both how to win and how to keep Firefox users. She embraces scale and leverage, and has been able to apply this to everything she touches. One of the biggest projects Chelsea lead and launched was the Mozilla Affiliates program, finishing the year with a program live in more than 10 languages, and with 10,000+ affiliates around the world. She also managed several partner campaigns with Ripcurl and the Ripcurl Pro event in San Francisco, and currently with the Firefox Challenge challenge on Crowdrise (celebrities are still duking it out for their charities to win). We’ve ended the year with even stronger word of mouth marketing programs and new ways for our Firefox users to engage and become advocates.

Content is king
In the late Summer Carmen Collins based in Florida became our content editor. As our direct channels grew and the number of people wanting to interact with us grew, it was clear we needed to put even more thought and rigor around a communication strategy and also calendaring of content. Carmen brought her skills as a writer, and process advocate - and set about constructing and implementing a content strategy. After several iterations we sit in a place where scores of stake-holders communicate and plan content together every week, and every month. Carmen also birthed our user engagement blog The Den which currently acts as a destination for articles often posted in social or helping give more context to email articles — there is much more to come. Lastly, Carmen is also a social media maven, and has been instrumental in assisting William work on increasing engagement in those channels; particularly working together with William to increase social sharing on Facebook in the last 3 months of the year by 20% to 300,000 shares.

Take it to the world
Lastly, Jess Davis also relocated from North Carolina to expand our email program throughout the world. Jess works very closely with Winston and apart from being a coding whizz, process junkie and sheer bundle of energy and delight - she has very quickly grown our email program to include truly localized versions of the Firefox and You newsletter in French, German, Brazilian Portuguese and Spanish. Jess recruited and works directly with our extended team of volunteer email content leads each month to produce and localize for their specific locales. Jess, has only been on board just over 3 months but already grew our volunteer efforts from 0 to 12. It was a great way to end the year.

-
And so, as you’ve read 2011 was an incredibly busy and successful year for the user engagement team. We smashed throughout our main target of building direct relationships with more than 10 million Firefox users. We nurtured and created loyalty. We built advocacy programs and allowed others to help. We extended beyond the English speaking world. We grew our team to include some amazing volunteers and paid staff from around the world.*

We’re putting the finishing touches to our 2012 plans. If this year is anything like last, its going to be a superb year!

* Big thanks to so many other people who helped the user engagement team in 2011 - you are a hugh part of that success - we’re incredibly proud and grateful.

User Engagement team (left to right): Carmen Collins, Jane Finette, William Reynolds, Jess Davis, Winston Bowden and Chelsea Novak. Sadly our extended volunteer team are not in this picture, but are still dearly part of the team. We’ll make that photo opportunity happen in 2012!

Cette modeste et géniale jeune femme dispose d’un pouvoir magique : à son contact, les projets prennent forme, les bonnes volontés se joignent et la documentation Libre progresse à pas de géants ! Si vous n’avez pas encore eu le plaisir de la rencontrer lors d’un docsprint ou une tradaction, ne manquez pas la prochaine occasion ! Tout à la fois Française, Brésilienne et Argentine, Elisa Godoy de Castro Guerra travaille actuellement comme graphiste. Avec Cédric Gémy, elle a fondé Floss Manuals francophone. Elle est actuellement présidente et facilitatrice pour cette association dont l’objectif est de produire des « Manuels libres pour logiciels libres ». Et avec tout ça, Elisa trouve encore le temps d’envoyer des photos à Bonjour Mozilla, qui par ce billet, tient à la remercier pour sa contribution !

Bonjour Elisa, et merci !

This modest and awesome young woman has a magical power: whatever project she touches, it takes shape and becomes real, good will gather to help, and Free documentation progresses by leaps and bounds! If you haven’t yet had the pleasure to meet her during a docsprint or a tradaction, don’t miss the next occasion! All at once French, Brazilian and Argentine, Elisa Godoy de Castro Guerra is currently working as a graphic designer. With Cédric Gémy, she founded Floss Manuals francophone. She is the president and facilitator for this association which the goal is to produce « Free Manuals for Free software ». In addition to all these things, Elisa still finds time to send photos to Bonjour Mozilla. We take the occasion of this post to thank her for her contribution!

Bonjour Elisa, and thank you!

If you are an Amazon Prime subscriber, you can check out one free book a month. However, Amazon doesn’t make it really easy for you to figure out which books are eligible to be checked out from the Owners’ Lending Library.

To see the list of books you can check out, search for “prime eligible” in Amazon Kindle Books.

If you find one you like, add it to your wishlist. Then on your Kindle, you can browse your wishlist and check it out.

Related posts:

1. Sharing books & Amazon’s Kindle
2. Trading used books: The best site is Paperbackswap!
3. Amazon adds e-books: reading your physical books online

I hear a lot of people worrying about getting more visibility. While I think visibility is important, I think worrying about visibility is the wrong way to go about it. Worrying about visibility makes people do weird, self-centered things.

If you want to be more visible, talk more about other people! Meet people, listen to them, laugh with them, spread their story.

Here are a few simple things that I think raise your visibility:

1. Talk about what’s exciting to you. Talk about things you think are exciting – not things that you think will make you sound cooler. Blog about things you find exciting, not just what you are working on. (Hopefully you are working on things you find exciting!)
2. Don’t worry about getting credit. I read lots of advice – especially for women – that says be sure to speak up for yourself, “toot your own horn”, make sure people know what value you add. Maybe they are right, but I think what you are working on will come across if you talk about what’s exciting to you and you promote others.
3. Promote others. It seems counter-intuitive, but I think it’s much more important to advocate for what other people are doing than it is to point out what you contributed. First off, it’s much more effective. People are much more likely to be impressed when you tell them this awesome person you know planned an awesome event which got 20 developers together and in a weekend they wrote all this awesome code for this awesome program that does this awesome thing … you get the picture. Much cooler to talk about other people. They are much more likely to believe you and to be impressed. And to retell the story. And who knows? Maybe some of the karma will rub off on you. Either way, you’ve made a difference. You’ve helped spread the word of a great project or person.
4. Listen to others. Listen to people, read their blogs. Actively listen, show that you’ve heard, ask questions, leave comments. People like being part of a conversation. People like being heard. They are more likely to remember you than the person that talked at them. And you are more likely to learn something really cool you can tell the next person about.
5. Don’t worry about how important someone is (or isn’t). You shouldn’t be afraid of speaking to “important” people. A GNOME developer once told me he was afraid of speaking to famous people on the project – it took him years to work up the courage. Believe me, my first couple of days as Executive Director of GNOME, I didn’t feel very important, I felt rather intimidated myself! And you shouldn’t consider hanging out with “unimportant” people a waste of time.  We all make a difference and you won’t know what cool things they are doing until you talk to them. (One exception: if someone is boring you to death, it’s best to move on. They can tell you are bored. If you are stuck with them, ask more questions, you probably haven’t found their passion yet.)

Related posts:

1. How to figure out if you can be a good advisor
2. Best way to conquer difficult conversations: just do it!
3. Learning Lessons While Dreaming

Mozilla is so much more than Firefox.  Mozilla is an idea, a mission, implemented through products, the market and people.  This video does a nice job of explaining how all this fits together.

A contradiction in terms — Mozilla a non-for-profit, with less than 600 paid staff, but with a product that celebrates 450+ million Firefox users served in more than 80 languages. 

Operating in a highly competitive environment, with significantly lower marketing budgets and people resources will sound familiar to many small and large businesses alike. So how do you compete and win? Its always been this way at Mozilla — but despite the odds in the very beginning and continuing today (with even more competition I might add) we continue to defy belief in terms of market-share and impact.

How is this possible?

We’ve built an incredibly strong product, community and brand foundation, and on top of that there are 3 areas in User Engagement which allow us to significantly have impact:

1. Direct relationships with our users
2. A loyal and passionate community of advocates
3. Partners who want to delight and tell our story

I recently gave a first talk about how Mozilla is able to compete using these force multipliers to the WebFWD teams, describing no matter what size or scale of operation you have; you can attempt to do the impossible by focusing on: Engagement, Participation and Partnering.

Here’s the deck (note: there are a lot of visuals, and not much context - I’ll be writing more detail about these force multiplying factors in future posts).

We’re starting off 2012 by releasing MPL 2.0, the updated version of the Mozilla Public License.  Here are the details about MPL 2.0.  The MPL was created as part of the launch of the Mozilla project in 1998, and was updated once in 1999.  The MPL is used by the Mozilla project for much of its code, including Firefox and Thunderbird.  It is also used by other organizations and individuals.

Version 2.0 is similar in spirit to the previous versions, but shorter, better, and more compatible with other Free Software and Open Source Licenses.   We appreciate the help of the Free Software Foundation for GPL compatibility and the Open Source Initiative for assistance with compatibility and their ultimate certification of the MPL as meeting free software and open source standards.

The MPL 1.1 versions had one expert who had been involved in every word and every decision.  Even today, more than a decade later, I can still bring to mind particular phrases or section references along with the rationale behind them.  The MPL 2.0 is a vast improvement here as well.  It has 5 peers now,  instead of just one.

I also want to call out the stellar work of Luis Villa, supported by Heather Meeker.  Luis started the MPL 2.0 revision process as a new lawyer just out of law school, but with a long and deep background in free/open source software.  Harvey and I believed that his software experience and his motivation would make up for his status as a young lawyer.     We have been more than vindicated — Luis began with project management, and has come to own much of the content over time.

The MPL 2.0 will be adopted by the Mozilla project; this decision was proposed, reviewed and decided as part of the beta and Release Candidate process over the fall of 2011.  The actual update process with be managed by Gervase Markham,  who managed the update from the MPL only to the MPL tri-license many years ago.

Many thanks to everyone who contributed to the process.  It’s an honor to work with so many great people.

So by now you’ve probably heard about the Louis CK experiment. You know, the one about the comedian who blows off the distributors and makes a cool million bucks in revenue in just 12 days — on his own! And nope, that’s no joke!

The American comedy writer/performer made more than 1 million dollars with $500,000 in profit by releasing and distributing his latest performance Live at the Beacon Theater as a non-copy-protected download for purchase on his own website for a tiny amount of $5.

Its a beautiful thing watching those few brave folks in the entertainment world break out alone into the digital realm. Technology resources, payment processing and the ability to socially building your own brand - are all out there on the Web and waiting to be used.

All the best to Louis CK (and the charities he’s supporting with $280,000 of the proceeds), he understands and embraces his own force multipliers — the value of his work, and that of the new direct relationships he just made with his fans.

The world needs more of these digital experiments, and more artists who want to connect directly with their audiences and fans. Looking forward to 2012 being that year!

November was MozCamp month for Mozilla. We held MozCamp Europe, including the Mid-East and Africa, and MozCamp Asia. For each MozCamp I gave an opening talk that touches on:

• what mozilla is, our key goals
• a bit of history about what we’ve done so far to meet our goals
• what we’re working on today
• what we should be doing in the future to meet our goals.

I’ve embedded the opening talk from MozCamp below. It’s a video, but the audio is the important part. It’s about 40 minutes long, so it’s not a set of sound-bites and it may seem slow-paced.   It is however, a pretty good summary of my view of the world and Mozilla’s place in it.

I also have a set of slides that reflect this talk. I’ll get them posted shortly as well.

Here’s the MozCamp Asia opening talk:

Over the summer and fall I wrote a set of posts about how Mozilla’s mission is leading us to develop new offerings and new ways of bring user sovereignty and freedom to online life.

My colleague David Ascher has written a piece which I find to be a nice summary of these goals. I’m planning to write a summary next year, after some discussion of user data, so I was very pleased to see that David has done so now. It’s a week or 10 days old, but if you haven’t seen it already it’s a nice, personal voice thinking about Mozilla in the new era.

In the realm of social media as king, having friends is easy, but keeping all those new friends engaged and nurturing that friendship isn’t as simple as it sounds. At Mozilla we have nearly 6.5M friends on Facebook, and we work hard to engage with our fans on multiple levels.

Our content is split pretty evenly between being (i) informative about Firefox as a product and sharing the latest news, (ii) offering helpful advice and tips on how to make the most of Firefox, and (iii) most importantly balanced with fun, engaging and inspiring engagement activities.

Throughout 2011 we’ve been able to significantly grow Firefox engagement activity on Facebook, with between 45-50% of our fans interacting with the brand on a monthly basis. We’ve also doubled the number of fans who ‘like’ Firefox. That’s pretty impressive given our size and compared to other high-profile brands.

The basis for all this? A hug, a handshake, a high-five. Every time we post and consider content in our direct communication channels we do that remembering our followers are our ‘friends’. We tell news, share tips, give virtual hugs, smiles and pointers to fans we care deeply about.

There are many more ways we can improve our interactions with fans and increase our direct engagement further - we’d love to hear your thoughts on how we can continue to make our social media channels engaging.

We’re in the business of building friendships at Mozilla. Its those friends who have made us, and will continue to make Mozilla successful.