Mozilla

Posts Tagged with “fun”

Mozilla: Celebrating the First Ten Years

January 22nd, 2008

2008 is a year to celebrate — Mozilla turns 10 this year. 10 years of open source history, commitment, product development, community building and accomplishments. An open source project of astonishing scope and diversity. A portion of the Internet that is more open and participatory than almost anyone imagined. A strong voice for what the Internet can be. That’s 10 amazing years.

2008 is a year to celebrate our history, our accomplishments, our community and our future. We have laid the groundwork for another great 10 years — years where we can influence the web for the better, demonstrate what openness, transparency and broad participation look like, marvel at the distributed excitement and fierce dedication to the Mozilla vision for the Internet, and do things we haven’t even dreamed up yet.

I really do mean a year to celebrate. Not one day, not even the actual date the code was released. That’s an important date and we’ll certainly celebrate it. But the code release was one part of what was a much larger effort 10 years ago, and is a much larger story today. 1998 saw some great accomplishments, and we’ll celebrate them this year. The project has seen great accomplishments all through this first decade, and we should celebrate these as well.

I don’t have precisely formed ideas yet for how we ought to mark our anniversary events. In general though, I’m intent on making sure that our activities are:

a) International in scope: notable events that take place around the globe.

b) Participatory. We’ve had crate-your-own parties in the past; that’s a good start. ‘d like to see us do some other things as well this year. Perhaps we might have a way for people to record their experiences with some event in Mozilla’s history. Perhaps we will create a timeline where people can note the various events they feel have been critical to the Mozilla project (this is not my idea). These are only early ideas; there’s lots of room for creativity here.

c) Varied.

d) Fun.

If you’ve got ideas, let me know (or Mary Colvig — mary at mozilla dot com). We may come up with some other tools for making planning easier, but comments here are a good start.

Fun and Fear

March 3rd, 2006

I learned another lesson about fear in my flying trapeze class last night. I’ve been doing flying trapeze for about 5 years now, and a lot of it is overcoming fear. Last night’s lesson was small, but struck me.

To do anything on the flying trapeze, you first climb up to the platform (about 22 feet off the ground in the gym I go to), grab hold of the trapeze bar with one hand, jump off the platform and put your other hand on the trapeze bar. Then you kick backward as hard as you can, so the body is in a giant arch. (Here’s a video of a nice warm-up swing). I kick back late. I’ve been told repeatedly, but something kept me from fixing the timing. That something was a fear of bashing my feet into the platform. Not the biggest thing I’ve been afraid of with the flying trapeze, but it’s been enough fear to stop me from fixing this problem. I’ve worked on plenty of other things to make the swing stronger and higher but conveniently ignored this.

Last night the timing got so bad it started messing up all the things that come afterward. So I had to address it. Sometimes the best approach is to be absolutely determined and force one’s body to react despite the fear as an act of willpower. Sometimes the alternative approach of relaxing and trying to “let go” of the fear is best. Often nothing works for a while 🙂

Last night the results of not fixing the problem were too clear to ignore, and after a false start or two I finally managed to push aside the hesitation and put all the energy into the kickback when I was told to. The result was instantaneous — power. More power in the swing, more height, more time. And unexpectedly, the moment of full extension brought not only power but also an moment of lightness, of complete freedom. And with it, an instant of exhilaration. I’ve known for a while that when my actual position lines up with what the physics of a good swing call for, a moment of “float-i-ness” or seeming lack of gravity appears. At these times it feels like one has all the time in the world.

Last night I learned again how a small amount of fear, seemingly too small to matter much, has far greater impact than one might imagine. That’s what I love about trapeze — these lessons are combined with a level of fun that seems too good to be true.

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