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Posts Tagged with “2010 goals”

Revised mobile goal for 2010

December 12th, 2008

As part of finalizing the 2010 goals I’ve been working through the feedback to each specific goal. I’ll post the results for each goal separately and then assemble them into a complete document.

Here’s the mobile piece. Everything is framed as a goal, rather than a big goal with specific tasks Mozilla ought to accomplish. I think this is the right approach, though I’ve gone back and forth. Many groups within the Mozilla community will identify specific tasks to accomplish these goals.

Goal: Integrate mobile into one unified, open, innovative web

1. Product(s)

  • are as exciting to users and developers as products built on closed proprietary technologies
  • accelerate innovation by reducing the fragmented operating system/ carrier / handset problems that developers face today
  • have mindshare and marketshare to influence the industry

2.  The web becomes the primary “SDK” for applications, rather than product specific proprietary SDKs.

3.  New web standards are for all devices, not segregated into mobile-specific or “web” standards.

Finalizing the 2010 goals

December 11th, 2008

I’m going to consolidate the feedback received to date on the 2010 goals and create a new version in the next couple of days. I will do a brown bag Tuesday, December 16 at 12:30 Pacific Time (8:30 p.m. GMT) for final feedback. We’ll stream the discussion on Air Mozilla and moderated chat is available on #brownbag. We’ve had a lot of discussion so there may not be a lot of interest in this session. That’s fine. Also great if there is. The next version is likely to be very close to final, if not the final version itself. So if you have any thoughts you haven’t expressed, please do so asap.

Mozilla Foundation and 2010 Goals

November 30th, 2008

In the past few weeks I’ve been involved in a lot of conversations about strengthening the Mozilla Foundation and a lot of conversations about the 2010 goals. I don’t think we’ve got the connection between the two quite right.

We’ve been thinking about the Foundation’s role in too small a way. We’ve been thinking along the lines of: “Which portion of our goals has a good space for Foundation activity?” Or “are some of these goals particularly Foundation-like?”  The result has been identification of some areas that do feel particularly appropriate for the Foundation. But this isn’t the biggest, or most important question.  These questions focus on organizational structure rather than the goals themselves.

The really important question is: How does Mozilla assemble / motivate / use all of our resources to achieve the things we identify as most important? In the near future, the  Foundation will develop new programs and new capabilities. For example, Mark has mentioned “education” as a likely area of focus. Let’s assume that’s the case, and let’s assume that mobile is a 2010 goal. The question we should be asking is:  what are all the things Mozilla can do to bring openness and participation and innovation to a unified web that spans mobile devices and the desktop?

The Foundation leads a set of product – related programs indirectly, through delegation to  Mozilla Corporation and Mozilla Messaging. It currently leads a set of programs directly, and will organize and lead a larger set in the future.    All of these programs should contribute to the tasks we think are most important. The product groups — browser, platform, messaging, email should all be contributing to each goal. Other parts of the Mozilla community will hopefully use their resources to help achieve the same goals.  The Mozilla Foundation should lead the way here.

With this approach, I looked at the goals again to see if they make sense. I think they do. Of course, the goals may be revised a bit as a result of the conversations of the past few months. But I don’t feel that the list should be changed due to increased Mozilla Foundation involvement. If the Foundation focuses on education, then it makes sense that some part of those programs would try to advance a unified web, consumer control over relevant data, and the other goals. If the Mozilla Foundation has a program focused on consumer outreach or evangelism, it again makes sense that part of those programs focus on the 2010 goals.

I also find that this approach better reflects the centrality of the Mozilla Foundation values — we are all focused on building an the Internet that refects Mozilla values. Some of us do so through creating products.  This is not separate from the key values or somehow different from the heart of the Mozilla Foundation. The products exist to make our values concrete. Our products exist to put innovation, choice and participation at the fingertips of hundreds of millions of people.

The products also open many doors, from evangelism to participation to thought leadership. All of thse resouces should be utilized in pursuit of our goals.

I’d like to go back and look at the the Foundation through this broader lens of Mozilla-wide goals.  I’ve talked with Mark about this. I think it’s fair to say he was also feeling we’re not quite there yet with the Foundation-specific part of the 2010 goals.  Mark will certainly speak for himself, but I do know that this more integrated approach resonates well with his work.    Look for something on this topic from Mark soon.

2010 Goals discussion — Latin America

November 6th, 2008

I see from Guillermo that the discussion of 2010 goals among the Spanish speaking Latin American community kicks off this week. And I know Marcio is back from vacation and getting ready to start discussions in Brasil. I’m very eager to see this develop, and start to build communities of people accustomed to — and who expect to be — talking about our goals and how to get there.

2010 Goals: Data Discussion

October 27th, 2008

On Tuesday, October 28 at 1 p.m. Pacific Time I’ll be holding a session to talk about the privacy and data section of the Mozilla 2010 goals. This will broadcast on Air Mozilla. We’ll also use the IRC channel (#2010goals) for people who want to ask questions via IRC. As usual, Asa will be the contact for Air Mozilla aspects of this.

I’m doing this Tuesday because a big set of the platform team will be in town and available at that time. That creates an opportunity to have a session that includes face-to-face discussions with a set of people who are rarely together. This follows the goals discussions in Barcelona this weekend, and will proceed other goals discussions among smaller groups where hopefully people will feel more engaged and comfortable speaking up.

I’ll get a more complete schedule for other goals discussions together shortly. If you want to participate in a session on data but can’t make the Tuesday session, let me know. If there are a lot of such people then I’ll schedule another session. Or you might contact anyone who is part of the other Mozilla contributor groups I listed — they will be participating in goals discussions.

2010 Goals and Broader Mozilla Foundation Ideas

October 19th, 2008

Mark Surman recently joined the Mozilla Foundation as our new Executive Director.  Mark and I are spending a lot of time together, and one topic is the 2010 goals.  I crafted these goals to be focused on our products and technology.  Now that Mark has been immersed in Mozilla for a few weeks (coming up on a month), we believe it would be great to include some references to even broader Mozilla Foundation goals.  Mark will propose something in the next week or so.  We hope that the various discussions about the 2010 goals will include some thinking on these topics.

Multiple Discussions re 2010 goals

October 18th, 2008

We started a conversation a while back about two year product and technology goals. I’d like to return to that discussion. It’s clear that a blog post and comments is a hard way to discuss a complex and nuance topics like this. Here are some techniques we’ll try to get broad input.

Multiple discussions, multiple constituencies.

Mozilla has many groups of people who work together on particular aspects of Mozilla products, technology, adoption and mission. These groups are a natural setting for discussing the overall goals of the Mozilla project, and what motivates people to contribute. With that in mind, we’re planning a set of discussions to give more people a chance to participate comfortably. Some of these will be face-to-face meetings; others will be online discussions.

Listed below are the people I know of so far who will be organizing discussions on 2010 goals among particular parts of the Mozilla community.

  • Tristan Nitot — European community at MozCamp in Barcalona in late October
  • Guillermo Movia — spanish-speaking Latin American communities
  • Marcio Galli — Brazilian community
  • Takita-san (Chibi) — Japanese community at Mozilla Developer Day in Tokyo on November 16
  • Seth Bindernagel — localization communities
  • Jay Patel — campus reps
  • David Tenser — SUMO community (probably as part of Support Firefox Day activities).

If you know of additional constituencies where such discussions would be valuable please let me know, and consider volunteering to work with me to make such discussions happen 🙂 And if you want to participate in one of the groups above but don’t know how to reach the identified person, let me know.

General discussions

I previously noted that I would organize specific times for general face-to-face / Air Mozilla / irc discussions for the various topics in the goals. I’m working on a schedule for that now. I expect that people who know me or are accustomed to dialing into Mozilla meetings — Monday meetings, Gecko meetings, Firefox and Thunderbird meetings — are the most likely to participate in these meetings. All are welcome. I recognize that it can be intimidating to participate in these as a contributor who doesn’t know many people personally. If that’s the case, please feel free to listen, and of course to join any of the group discussions above (or propose your own).

Discussion of Mobile Goals — Sept. 17 2008

September 22nd, 2008

On Wednesday, September 17 a group of 10 or 15 people had a discussion about the proposed 2010 “mobile” goal. The notes of that meeting are below. I’ve also incorporated additional comments from the newsgroup. Asa, Atul, and Nanda are interested in facilitating future discussions of these topics. (I’m interested too, but not always around. And in any case the whole goal is to build many connections, with many set of discussions.) Each of them may initiate discussions, 1 or 2 people, maybe groups. If you’re interested in discussing this feel free to contact any of us in addition to commenting here (contact info is at the end.)

I’ve put an outline first, for brevity.

Effective Product in the mobile market means:

  • mindshare
  • marketshare
  • momentum
  • Reference Implementation for the Generative Web
  • Platform issues ongoing (is this an execution issue, or is there a value piece here as well?

One, unified web, including mobile means:

  • Mobile specific presentation, not mobile specific content
  • The Web as SDK
  • General Web standards and APIs, not mobile specific

Effective Product Discussion
Part one of the mobile goal says “have an effective product in the mobile market.”  What do we mean by an “Effective Product”?

  • First, the three “M”s:  mindshare, marketshare, momentum
  • Asa asked if there is there an cross-platform value here as there is on the desktop. We didn’t reach a conclusion on this. (In any case portability as a technical requirement is high.)
  • Reference Implementation for the Generative Web. We also ended up thinking an important goal might well be to make our mobile product a reference implementation for the generative web. In other words, an effective product is one that demonstrates how much innovation and improvement in user experience is possible through openness. We’re looking at a range of products that are (a) tightly controlled up and down the entire stack; and which (2) promote development of applications that aren’t web applications, but are built on closed technologies. We could define an effective product is one that demonstrates this closed, non-web approach is not necessary and is limiting. The exact phrase is mine. I like it because we have long thought of Firefox on the desktop as a “reference implementation for web standards” as well as a great end user product. I like the symmetry here, but even so the phrase itself is not important.
  • Zak asks if an effective product is one which people can use to *author* content, we haven’t talked about this yet.

One Web Discussion
The second part of the proposed mobile goal says “demonstrate that ‘mobile’ is part of one, unified, open web.”

  • We spend a bunch of time talking about mobile specific sites, content and presentation. It’s pretty clear that the size and input mechanisms of mobile devices mean that simply presenting the full website exactly as we see it on the desktop doesn’t always result in the best experience. Our hope is that the tuning for mobile is in *presentation* via CSS and other web-centric techniques. Tuning for presentation can be something good for users. We hope not too see to many mobile-specific sites or very much mobile specific content. That content lives in silos, is not sharable with the web, and ends up promoting the different closed gardens of information and communities that the web has done so much to alleviate. We need to make sure that the web mechanisms available (CSS, etc.) are adequate to the task.
  • Our current label for this idea is: “the Web as SDK.” Build mobile content using web technologies and standards, accessible across devices, and vary the presentation to fit the device.

  • Standards and APIs. We want to avoid mobile-specific standards and APIs. That also encourages fragmentation of content and access. Our goal is to expand the web to be a good mobile platform. This means developing APIs (like geolocation) as part of the web standards so they can be used across the range of devices from mobile to desktop. (We noted that this is not a simple or easy goal. Security is always a concern, as is the multitude of devices.

Broader picture.
Two areas were raised where we weren’t sure how a Mozilla product could help, they seem to have an advocacy or policy basis. We wanted to capture them as areas to look at again, see if the Mozilla Foundation’s programs might address these or there are others working on this who have ideas for which Mozilla is particularly qualified to participate.

  • What about bringing the mobile web to the billions of people in the developing countries / emerging markets?
  • access to the web via mobile devices is very expensive, in both developed and emerging markets.

Future Discussions.
Three of the people in this gathering — Asa (asa at mozilla dot org), Atul (avarma at mozilla dot com) and Nanda (kishore dot nanda at gmail.com) are interesting in facilitating future discussions of these topics. (I’m interested too, but not always around. And in any case the whole goal is to build many connections, with many set of discussions.) Each of them may initiatite discussions, 1 or 2 people, maybe groups. If you’re interested in discussing this feel free to contact any of us, or of course to comment here.

Diving Deeper into the Proposed 2010 Goal for Mobile

September 21st, 2008

Note:  I saw one press article wondering if including “have an effective product in the mobile space” in our 2010 goals means that we won’t ship something interesting until 2010.  That is not the case at all.  We will ship well before then.  The intent of this goal was to say: in 2010 when we look at where we are, it should be screamingly obvious that we’ve done this. That means releasing a good product much sooner, seeing good results and acceptance, and seeing those results grow over time.

We also need to get a bit further on what “effective product” means. The details may or may not end up in the goals statement, brevity may be a big virtue.  But if there aren’t included, we’ll want a place where we capture the next couple of levels of detail.

On that note, I posted some questions about the mobile goal in the mozilla.governance newsgroup last week.  I meant to cross-post here simultaneously, but last week was quite hectic and I missed that.

I’ve proposed a set of product and technology goals for Mozilla for 2010. (http://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2008/09/11/proposed-2010-goals/) One of these goals is about the mobile space. It’s below. I believe that the two very high level goals I proposed for mobile are uncontroversial in themselves. If that’s not the case then please speak up asap.

3. Mobile

* have an effective product in the mobile market
* demonstrate that “mobile” is part of one, unified, open web”

Gerv has suggested we talk about what an “effective product” means. Is that a market share number? Some degree of mindshare? Proof that Firefox on mobile devices is as exciting as Firefox on the desktop? Are users the key, or innovation, or speed, or mindshare?

As to the second part of the goal Stuart notes that we’ll need to think about how content is created for devices with different characteristics than a desktop machine, and how this affects our idea of one web. How should we approach this?

What do you think is necessary for an “effective product” on mobile devices?  And how should we think about maintaining one web? Free-flow thoughts are welcome — what’s the picture you’d like to see?

(Some thoughts from summit attendees can be found here. I asked people to put their thoughts on sticky notes and attach them to the various goals. So these are stitched together in any way.)

Last week we also had an initial in person / phone dial-in group discussion regarding the mobile goals. I’ll post about that next.

Mechanics for discussion of 2010 goals

September 21st, 2008

About ten days ago I published a proposed set of product and technology goals for the next two years. It’s a bit hard to talk about the topic in one big chunk. There are some very thoughtful comments to my last post that I want to discuss, but if feels a bit fragmented to do that through blog comments. (Many thanks to those who’ve responded).

To address this I’m going to break the discussion into smaller pieces. I’ll put them here, and also in the mozilla.org Governance newsgroup where it’s sometimes easier to have a discussion. You can also participate through the mozilla.governance Google Group. I’ll seed the discussions with some questions, context and with the comments that have been made so far.

We’ve set up an IRC (Internet Relay Chat) channel called #2010goals; I’ll hang out there as much as possible for the next few weeks. Anyone interested in the topic is more than welcome to do the same, to look for me or just for discussions. I’m traveling this coming week and expect to be frantically busy, so this week may not fiind me in #2010goals much, but there are other interested folks to look for. I expect the channel will be used most as the discussions peak.

We’ll also try having a series of phone/ video group discussions. We’ll definitely do some from Mountain View in the California timezone. We may do some in other timezones as well, I haven’t looked into arranging this yet.

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