commonspace

Mozillian brainpower and passion. Yay!

As the old saying goes: 'There's nothing like getting stuck behind a rockslide with 400 of your closest friends.' Okay, maybe it's not an old saying yet ... but it will be as people mythologize and remember the 2008 Firefox Plus Summit -- float planes, candles and all.

 

And mythologize they should. The brainpower and passion gathered at the Mozilla event was truly awesome. What's more, it wasn't just technology brainpower and passion (although it was certainly that in spades). Everyone I met to was just as stoked to talk about broader values like openness, the internet and community as they were about mobile browsers and data in the cloud. This is what drives it all. While this isn't really surprising, feeling this kind of passion emanate off 400 living, breathing human beings is waaaaaaaaaay more real than just thinking about it in the abstract. Amazing, really.

More concretely: there were many of great conversations at the Summit about both Mozilla's evolving identity and Mozilla Foundation 2.0. I will post in detail on these topics when I return from off-the-grid holidays in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, thanks to everyone I met for such a warm welcome to the Mozilla community. I am really hoping I have something useful to contribute.

Prototyping the open ed revolution

Frank Hecker has a series of posts up today on 'Mozilla and the Future of Education'. It's a bit of a thought experiment to imagine what Mozilla might do if it dipped it's toe further into the education pond. The line I like most is:

Mozilla Foundation could also work with others to change the entire manner in which the next generation of software developers is educated.

That's a great vision! Why? Because it could flow from Mozilla doing something related to its core needs (running more Mozilla developer courses) while at the same time contributing to the growth of a whole new way of working (collaborative global apprenticeship as a way to do computer studies).

This 'solve a concrete problem -> create something more broadly and mind blowingly useful as a side effect' itself seems part of the Mozilla DNA. The module ownership system is something that was created to meet a particular need. It's now something that has directly and indirectly influenced how all sorts of people work well beyond the boundaries of Mozilla.

The trick is: make sure to think about both 'what' and 'how' Mozilla engages with education. The 'what' could be quite simple and close to home. Computer studies courses on Mozilla development, and maybe even some courses on design for open source at art colleges or the history and economics of the open internet for communications students. However, making sure that the 'how' is built around open, collaborative materials and pedagogy means the Mozilla is already protoyping the open education revolution as it goes about its everyday business. That would be fun.

PS. I hope this is coherent. I have a cold! :(

A few concrete things Mozilla Foundation might do

Looking back over dozens of online and over-beer conversations, it's clear the Mozilla Foundation can play an important role in the world. This role is not to oversee or second guess the people producing Firefox, Thunderbird, SeaMonkey, XUL and other technologies that fulfill Mozilla's mission of keeping the internet open. Meddling with this work doesn't help anyone. However, the foundation can and should build on this excellent work. It can fill gaps (accessibility). It can connect dots (amongst Mozilla communities). And it can reach out to new groups of people with something to contribute (the next million Mozillians). These are basically things that make Mozilla stronger, but are beyond and between what's already going on.

The question is: what does this look like concretely? Of all the blog postings from the last few weeks, David Boswell took the best kick at this can. Offer grants and collect donations (yes, and more strategically). Build bridges between people using Mozilla technologies in their own work (yes, and how it happens matters alot). Promote what Mozilla communities are doing (yes, but how do we do it well?). Use our broader community as a laboratory (for sure, and that was what I was dreaming of here). I totally agree that the foundation should be doing stuff like this.

Most of these things focus on the second layer of Mitchell's community spheres (what she calls 'community of action' and I call 'community of practice' ... we need to get clear on this language). This is the domain of shared tools and practices, which is a critical place for the foundation to play. However, as I have talked to Mozilla people, many have also emphasized things the foundation could do at the outer layers and even at the core of these spheres. I've listed a few here.

At the centre of the sphere sit communities producing Mozilla technology products. As above, it's not the foundation's job to do or meddle with this work. However, it can do things that build a better environment for the people creating these products. A good example is growing the number of colleges and universities offering community-based Mozilla courses like the one at Seneca. Work like this has the potential to benefit a wide variety of Mozilla communities through code contributions and, more importantly, a bigger contributor talent pool. However, people with heads down on individual products don't have time to grow something like this, especially as it takes long term investment and nurturing. The foundation could champion this kind of work in open source education -- and also further efforts in areas like accessibility and technology research -- in a way that benefits core Mozilla communities over the medium and long term.

At the very outer layer of the sphere is a vast community of users: 180 million people who interact with the internet everyday through Mozilla products. These are some of the most likely people in the world to care for and champion the open internet. Yet, a good chunk of them probably don't know what the open internet is and why it matters. The foundation could play a role in changing this. It could help people understand the issues emerging around data in the cloud. It could explain the role neutral networks play in driving innovation, commerce and community. And it could do these sorts of things in a way that activates, involves and showcases people from across Mozilla's many communities (think: FirefoxFlicks).

Reaching out like this to casual users of Mozilla products creates the opportunity not only to educate but also to engage. Some percentage of people touched through this sort of outreach will move into Mozilla's community of interest (the next layer from the edge). They will want to take action in some way. As David Eaves suggests, initial steps to support people like these could be quite simple:

a) greet these newcomers and make them feel welcome; and b) (create) some capacity to point them in the direction of a variety of institutions, organizations, projects and activities, where they can channel their energy.

The foundation could also give these people a simple way to demonstrate their willingness to contribute to the open internet. Maybe this is simply signing a pledge to shows how their work contributes to the goals of the Mozilla Manifesto. Or maybe it is something else. In some ways, the specific approach doesn't matter. What matters is that people feel a sense of belonging ... and that they feel encouraged to stretch themselves to contribute in even more concrete ways. Maybe these people are part of the community laboratory that David B. describes? Who knows? The point is to invite them in and find out.

This is not intended as a definitive list of things the foundation could do. Far from it. Instead, it is meant as an experiment: I wanted to see what it would look like if listed concrete things the foundation could do to add value in all the main spheres where Mozilla communities work.

Of course, the idea with an experiment like this is to create a starting point for seeking further ideas and advice. So: what else? What are the concrete things the foundation can be doing between and beyond existing efforts that also add value to the Mozilla community? I am hoping that the Air Mozilla tomorrow will provide a first chance to take this conversation further. I have no doubt there will be many more.

PS. Sorry for repeating the picture from my previous post. I felt it was worth showing the circles again as context ... knowing that this is my view and we still more discussion on these.

Me and Mozilla

Over the past few months, I've been musing a fair bit about Mozilla. The main reason for this is now widely known: I'm hoping to take on the role of Executive Director at the Mozilla Foundation. On Wednesday, Mitchell, Asa and I will be on Air Mozilla to meet the community and get advice on what a successful future for the Foundation would look like.

This conversation started with a simple itch to contribute. Reading a post by Mitchell back in March, it struck me that Mozilla was facing many of the same questions I've been struggling with for years. I wasn't yet thinking 'I want to be executive director' ... just that there was some interesting intersections here. I wrote this mail:

Mitchell

A few days back, I read your post about the ED hiring process. I haven't stopped thinking about the Mozilla Foundation since. I'm convinced I've got something to offer Mozilla as it charts it's future.

For the past four years, I've been asking: how do you build an effective foundation, NGO network or social movement with open source thinking built right into its DNA?

In 2005, I started and led a $26 million initiative that mixed grantmaking and community building to connect grassroots technology activists in emerging economies. After passing that off last year, I joined the Shuttleworth Foundation in South Africa to help integrate transparency, networks and iterative learning more deeply into their day-to-day work.

In both cases, I've really struggled with the right balance of organizational models: vibrant open source project; catalytic social investor; bottom-up mass movement. From the little I've read online, it seems like the Mozilla Foundation is currently grappling with this same question.

This question is an important one. We have the chance to weave the values of openness, innovation and opportunity not only into the Internet, but also into our economy and society as whole. Promoting and protecting these values requires a completely new kind of organization, fueled by emergence, community and creativity.

Building this new kind of organization is what I am committed to and driven by. And, to a great degree, it's what I've been working on for a while now

I believe my experience so far can help the Mozilla Foundation. This help might simply be a conversation. It might be a link between our work at Shuttleworth and the next iteration of Mozilla Foundation. Or, it might mean me stepping up as a Mozilla executive director candidate. I'm not sure yet.

What I know is we've got enough in common that it's worth a chat. I LOVE the work I'm already doing with the Shuttleworth Foundation, and I am not really in job search mode. But, there's an itch here. It's worth scratching.

Cheers ... MS

The dozens of conversations I have had since have been both inspiring and humbling. Not only have the Mozillians I've met so far achieved a great deal, but they've done it with a mix of feet-on-the-ground practicality and big picture vision that I've rarely seen. At the same time, they're constantly asking tough questions like 'how could this be better'? It is quite amazing.

These conversations have left no doubt in my mind: I could contribute -- and learn -- a great deal as Mozilla Foundation executive director. I want to do this. With all my heart.

Of course, these conversations have also left me with many questions. What role should the Foundation play within the broader Mozilla Project? What do existing Mozilla communities need from the Foundation? And how can the Foundation build on and leverage Mozilla technology to reach a broader community of people who want to keep the internet open? I've already asked alot of people these questions and started reflecting on my blog. I am hoping that Wednesday's Air Mozilla will provide a chance to dig deeper and learn what more people think.

In the meantime, I plan to share a few more thoughts on concrete things the Foundation might be doing in each of the 'community circles' mentioned in previous posts. I will post on this tomorrow.

Open Education at OSCON 2008

Danese Cooper has organized what promises to be an excellent conversation about open education at OSCON in Portland. Mark Shuttleworth will be part of the mix. Karien and I prepared some quick background notes for Mark re: what think is exciting in this space and the specific work we're doing. I figured it would be useful to share here:

1. A growing number of people are creating open, collaborative learning content. This is exciting. It not only increases access to knowledge, it also adds more creativity and collaboration to the classroom.

• The Open Courseware Consortium now has 200 member universities
• Leading sites like Connexions, Curriki and OER Commons house over 45,000 open educational resources
• Commercial entrants like Flat World Knowledge are stepping in and driving innovation

2. While it draws on the values and techniques of open source, open educational content is different. That's the point of the Cape Town Declaration: to define the principles that should guide open education.

• The Declaration calls for open approaches to content, technology and teaching
• 1600 people and 165 organizations have signed the declaration since January
• Signatories include everyone from Jimmy Wales to Desmond Tutu to Peter Gabriel

3. It's also important to do bold, concrete experiments where we figure out the techniques that make open education work. That's why we're creating a set of free, collaborative textbooks for South African schools.

• Will cover all core subjects in South African curriculum from k-12
• Focus is not just free beer: the aim is to get teachers to create collaboratively
• Helping to build a platform standard by working with Connexions at Rice University

Other open edu co-conspirators on the panel: Brian Behlendorf (who will hopefully talk about the super cool and disruptive Seneca / Mozilla open source course model); David Wiley (inventor of the first open content license and open ed super hero); and Bobbi Kurshan (fearless leader of the Curriki revolution). If you're going to OSCON next week, this panel is a must see. Sadly, I won't be there myself.

Unbundling education

One of the highlights of this week's PCF5 conference in London was Richard Heller's presentation on the emerging Peoples Uni.project.

Peoples-Uni offers online professional development courses to public health workers in developing and emerging economies. Interesting enough in it's own right, but more interesting is how they do it:

1. The focus is on teaching and online facilitation, not materials creation. Which means all the energy goes into responding to student needs. All the materials are off the shelf existing open educational resources from places like Johns Hopkins.
2. All the instructors are volunteers. The volunteer pool includes: a gaggle of retired professors; recent graduates from a public health masters program in the UK; and 30 health care economists. Heller is having to grapple with the kinds of volunteer management issues common in open source projects, but rarely dealt with in open education.
3. At the end of each course, students have the option of being accredited through tests administered by the Royal Society of Health. This is the same test that students taking similar courses in formal institutions would get. If they pass, they receive a certificate.

The intersection between 'hacked together volunteer run courses' and 'very serious, buttoned-down assessment and accreditation' is very cool. Right now, almost all education fuses instruction and accreditation. The result is often inflexible, boring instruction driven by the testing process. Unbundling accreditation from instruction changes this. It creates space for innovation on the instruction side, especially when combined with open educational resources. I think we are going to see more of this.

Heller's presentation was one of about 20 on open educational resources, mostly from poorer Commonwealth countries. Which, really, was amazing. All of the presentations are well documented on WikiEducator. It's worth taking a look.

Budapest + Cape Town: What's Open?

During our PCF5 workshop on the Cape Town Declaration, Paul West and I got into a collegial debate about the definition of an 'open educational resource'. He held up a book he's working on and said: "This contains legal advice that I've had vetted, so I want to release it under a no-derivatives Creative Commons license. I think this is an open educational resource. Do you?"

My answer was 'no'. For me, the fundamental test of an open educational resource is whether it is under a license and uses a format that allows remixing. This is how we defined it in the Cape Town Declaration:

Open educational resources should be freely shared through open licenses which facilitate use, revision, translation, improvement and sharing by anyone. Resources should be published in formats that facilitate both use and editing, and that accommodate a diversity of technical platforms.

The real promise of open education rests on this remixability. It's what creates space for increased innovation and creativity in learning.

Of course, there is an important place in education for fixed, authoritative works like the one Paul describes. And, there is no question, releasing these under an open license like CC-ND is a very good thing. However, I would label such documents as 'open access resources' rather than 'open educational resources'.

While may seem like nit-picking, it's important to be clear on the differences here. The stakes are high. The Budapest Declaration defined the minimum spec for an open access resource, which benefited the worlds of education and research tremendously. Cape Town has now set out a spec for open education resources. It may have a similar effect over time, but only if we are clear that open educational resources represent a separate and complimentary tactic to open access. They are about the potential of remixable education.

More on Mozilla: communities, circles and maps

Mitchell and others recently posted about the Mozilla community as a series of concentric circles. These posts make it clear that being a part of a community like Mozilla (or not) isn't a binary switch. Rather, people have varying degrees of involvement and connection. There are different kinds of community members. And, one person might be multiple places in the community at once.

This is a very useful idea. It provides a sort of map to help sort out all the ideas floating around about the evolution of the Mozilla Foundation might do. However, as Mitchell said in her first post, this map only works if the the language and concepts are fairly precise. More conversation is needed to get this point. My take is something like this ...

The centre circle in Mozilla feels like it's about the creation of specific artifacts (a web browser) and outcomes (a world record). For me, this is more than just a 'community of practice'. It's a community that makes things. Matthew Aslett gets close to describing this with 'developer community'. However, it would be great to have a term that incorporates people who create concrete things that aren't code (e.g. documentation or marketing campaigns). Maybe this centre circle is a 'community of production'? I am not sure. Whatever term sits at the centre should be about creating concrete things.

As Mitchell describes it, the next circle is much more in like with what I understand to be a community of practice: a group of people who work in a similar way (shared practices), often for a similar purpose (shared values). A loose association of cabinet makers in Vermont could be a community of practice. They swap ideas. They share local techniques. The might even share specialized tools. But they do not work together on producing a common artifact: they each make their own cabinets. Similarly, there are people and projects who share decision making models (module ownership), tools (Bugzilla) and values (an open Internet and others working on open source) with people producing Mozilla products, but these people are working on their own artifacts and activities. For me, this is what a community of practice looks like.

At the outer edges of the circle, Mitchell's take on 'community of interest' (share Mozilla values) and 'user community' (use Mozilla products) feels spot on. As Gerv points out, the potential in seeing these groups differently -- and helping people move from one to the other -- is huge:

The Community of Interest is formed from people who were in the User Community, but then became aware enough about the project to a) see that we have a mission, b) learn what it is, and c) decide that it’s a good idea. Exactly how we benefit from this will differ from person to person. It may be that ordinary users are more eager to recommend Firefox to their friends. It may be that a politician considers us when involved in patent policy. It may be that a web designer remembers us when his boss asks him to construct an IE-only site “because it’s quicker”.

In some ways, this is a much clearer articulation of what I was trying to get to with my Next Million Mozillians post: finding a way to get people to move from 'Firefox is cool!' to 'Firefox is important!'. Which hopefully leads to some sort of action, even if it is only telling someone else why Firefox and the open Internet matter.

Of course, thinking of Mozilla as a series of circles oversimplifies a little. Just as there is no single open source community, it's likely there is no single Mozilla community. Each part of the circle includes a myriad of people, projects and ideas. And people will often sit within multiple parts of the circle at once as they are working on multiple things. Which is a good thing.

Still, the circles provide a useful framework for thinking thinking through all the ideas people have been putting on the table. Strengthening, supporting and connecting various pieces of Mozilla 'community or production' is a very different activity than moving millions of people from 'user community' to 'community of interest'. Yet, both are important, and both are probably a part of what the Foundation should be doing.

As a part of the broader 'where should the Mozilla Foundation go' discussion, it might be useful to look at specific things the Foundation could do in each of the circles ... and I guess also what the other pieces of the Mozilla Project are doing in each area. I'll come back to this in another post. Unless someone beats me to it.

Mapping open education policy opportunities

Just before leaving for Italy, I spent a day in London talking with friends about the open education policy agenda. The friends in question were Darius Cuplinskas and Melissa Hagemann from the Open Society Institute, James Dalziel from Macquarie University in Australia and Polish activist Jaroslaw Lipszyc. The conversation focused on how to understand and act on opportunities for government policy that supports the principles outlined in the Cape Town Open Education Declaration.

As we knew in advance, both Poland and Australia are fertile ground in terms of open ed. Polish activists like Jaroslaw have gotten the attention of politicians, a few of whom have expressed an interest in building ideas like free textbooks into their platform. And, as the large number of Cape Town signatures from Poland demonstrates, there is a great deal of academic and NGO support. In Australia, the opportunity is mostly around large scale computerization in the schools. As governments across the country roll out this agenda, they will eventually have to deal with the issue of content. James sees this as an opportunity.

Of course, there are lots of unanswered questions about the specifics of moving ahead with these opportunities. How to package and sell concrete open ed policy ideas? How are decisions made? Who are the right allies? We agreed that it would be worth going through a process to answer these questions and map the opportunities in each country. The rough schematic for the map looked like this:

Melissa is currently looking for someone to turn this sketch into a more formal spec for creating the maps. Once she's got a basic outline of what we are looking for, I will post it here. In the mean time, I am going to talk to Shuttleworth colleagues to see whether a similar process might be worthwhile in South Africa.