Remember those awesome pop-up videos on VH1? Thanks to Mozilla Popcorn, the new HTML5 tool for supercharging web video, the pop-up format is about to get a whole new lease on life.

Exhibit A: this wicked “Buffy the Vampire Slayer vs. Edward from Twilight” remix, created by the mash-up maestro from Rebellious Pixels. Check it out here. Then get started making your own pop-up video here.

“Hacking pop culture”

First posted in its original form in 2009, the “Buffy vs. Edward” remix video has garnered over 4 million views, been subtitled into 30 languages, and received media attention from NPR radio to Vanity Fair (“Buffy Could Kick Edward Cullen’s Precious Sparkly Emo Ass“).

The new Mozilla Popcorn-powered “pop-up” version adds a new interactive layer over top, with added annotations, commentary, and tips on protecting yourself from real-life stalkers.

The video’s creator, “pop culture hacker” Jonathan McIntosh, says the remix is all about hacking gender roles and Hollywood cultural coding — a theme he’s explored in other projects like the hilarious “Gendered Advertising Remixer,” now also available in HTML5 format.

Create your own pop-up video with Mozilla Popcorn

Want to add annotations and pop-ups to your own videos? Popcorn Maker is designed to make the power of Mozilla Popcorn more accessible to non-developers and mere mortals. Popcorn Maker’s “pop-up video” template makes it (fairly) easy for you to add annotations and context to just about any video on the web.

The software is still in early alpha version, so there’s still lots of rough edges. But you can check it out and get started now. Just pick “Pop Video” from the “Choose a Template” menu.  Or have a look at the Popcorn Maker user manual here.

Mozilla partners with public media to empower citizen engagement in U.S. election coverage

Tuesday’s State of the Union Address from U.S. President Barack Obama will include something special: crowdsourced captions and subtitles provided by everyday citizens around the world.

Using new web tools from Mozilla and the Participatory Culture Foundation, participants will transcribe and translate the President’s speech into dozens of languages in a matter of hours, making it more accessible to those with disabilities and in other countries across the globe.

Launching “Open Election 2012″

The event marks the launch of “Open Election 2012,” a new partnership  between Mozilla, PBS NEWSHOUR, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting  (CPB) and Participatory Culture Foundation.

Open Election 2012 will showcase how new open web technologies and citizen participation can make election coverage more accessible to diverse audiences, and provide new ways to engage with the news.

Adding context and interactivity with Mozilla Popcorn
Throughout the election, PBS NEWSHOUR will also use “Mozilla Popcorn,” a new HTML5 media tool Fast Company recently called “the future of online video.”

Popcorn makes it possible to pull other content and context from across the web right into the story, providing new ways for viewers to interact with video news.

Engaging and inspiring audiences
“It is part of the mission of public media to make our content available to everyone,” explained Hari Sreenivasan, Correspondent and Director of Digital Partnerships for PBS NEWSHOUR.

“From Chinese to Dutch, the speech translation is a true service for those for whom English is a second language and the hard of hearing. We hope to engage and inspire audiences too often forgotten.”

Learn more

• Read the CPB press release on “PBS NEWSHOUR Open Election 2012″
• Learn more or get involved with Mozilla Popcorn
• Learn more or get involved with Universal Subtitles

This will be remembered as the day the web went dark. Today, Mozilla is joining other public interest organizations, everyday internet users around the world, and tech companies from Wikipedia to Reddit to Google.

Together we’re going on “virtual strike” to shine a light on proposed censorship legislation that could effectively create a “Great Firewall of America.”

And we need your voice to help stop it.

What’s going on?

The U.S. Congress is trying to pass legislation that threatens free speech and innovation on the Internet, under the banner of anti-piracy efforts.

This legislation, the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) and its companion legislation in the US House, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), would give the US government and private business incredible  global censorship powers, damage the Internet’s security, and discourage  innovation and investment worldwide.

Learn more:

• PIPA/SOPA and Why You Should Care — Mozilla’s Chief Lizard Wrangler, Mitchell Baker
• Mozilla to Join Tomorrow’s Virtual Protests of PIPA/SOPA — Mozilla Privacy and Public Policy Lead, Alex Fowler
• Mozilla and PIPA/SOPA — Mozilla CEO, Gary Kovacs

Take action:

There’s a week left until Senators return to Washington from their districts, when their vote is scheduled on the PROTECT IP Act. We need to make one last big push by contacting their local offices and asking them not to support PIPA.

If you’re in the U.S.:

• Call your Senator here: http://stopthewall.us/
• Or email them here: https://blacklists.eff.org/

If you’re outside the U.S.:

• Forward this on to anyone you know in the U.S.
• Sign this petition to get your message to the US State Department: http://americancensorship.org/modal/state-dept-petition

Other ways to get involved

• Change your profile picture to join the #BlackoutSOPA campaign: http://www.blackoutsopa.org/

Mozilla FAQ on SOPA

What’s this about?
The U.S. Congress is trying to pass legislation that threatens free speech and innovation on the Internet, under the banner of anti-piracy efforts.

What’s at risk?
These new laws would give the US government and private business incredible  global censorship powers, damage the Internet’s security and discourage  innovation and investment worldwide.

The result?
Your favorite websites, both inside and outside the US, could be blocked based on a single infringement claim, without any due process of law.

How is it done?
The  US will be able to block a site’s web traffic, ad traffic and search  traffic.

What about piracy?
Piracy is a problem but there are better ways to address it that don’t stifle innovation, knowledge and creativity, or give the US such unchecked power over the global Internet.

What is Mozilla doing exactly?
We’ll be redirecting our main mozilla.org and mozilla.com English web sites to an action page for 12 hours on Wednesday, January 18th (8:00 am – 8:00 pm US Eastern Time). Also, the Firefox default start page will be blacked out so 100% of en-US visitors will see our call to action. Usage of Firefox is not limited or effected.

Why not a full blackout?
We hope the blackout of our US sites will educate people about this important issue. Mozilla believes that the individuals’ security on the Internet is fundamental and cannot be treated as optional. Access to the latest and most secure version of Firefox ensures user security. Thus some of the site functionality will stay in place during the blackout.

How long have you been involved in anti SOPA activities?
Mozilla has been actively involved in the stop SOPA activities from the start with our first public facing activities rallying for support in November.

Why does this matter to Mozilla?
The Mozilla project is a global community of people who believe that openness, innovation, and opportunity are key to the continued health of the Internet. These new laws would give the US government and private business incredible censorship powers that would have effects globally, damage the Internet’s security and discourage innovation and investment worldwide.

Is this just a matter for Americans to care about?
The laws will have effects globally, damaging the Internet’s security and discouraging innovation and investment in web technology worldwide. As it is a proposed US law, our call to action focuses on US citizens, asking them to reach out to their representatives.

There’s a battle going on for your online soul. 2012 will be a year where the good guys take some important steps forward in that battle.

Mitchell Baker and Ben Adida‘s posts on online identity and what Mozilla is doing to empower users are important reading for anyone who cares about where the web is headed.

As Mitchell notes, all of us are now creating and sharing more and more of our personal data online. This opens exciting possibilities, but also serious questions: How do you protect and empower yourself in the cloud? Who can you trust? And who ultimately owns the online version of “you?”

Who makes the rules? The architecture of “you”

You are valuable. Your online data, decisions and content are worth something to yourself and others. As thinkers like Ben Cerveny have pointed out, each of us leaves a trail behind us as we travel through the “luminous bath” that is the web. This data says something about you, leaving a set of footprints others can potentially follow. Your data is unique, and it has value.

So who makes the rules around how your data gets used? As Mitchell writes:

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.

This is bigger than just Google and Facebook. The question of “who makes the rules” is a more fundamental question about the architecture of user data and the Internet itself.

This architecture boils down to some fundamental design questions about how your data is shared. Do you decide, setting the rules once, then pushing them out across your online experience? Or are you instead subject to a confusing mishmash of different rules for your data, each set by whatever application or service you happen to be using at the time?

Putting you at the center

Mozilla believes you need to be at the center of your online experience, with the option to store your data in the cloud and then set the rules for how it it accessed across the web. This means you get to set the rules, instead of other sites deciding for you. Mitchell writes:

To really help people with the way we use and share data today, Mozilla will 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.

Identity that answers to no one but you

Concretely, as Ben Adidad explains, this means Mozilla will ramp up work on a host of “user-centric” (I think of them as “you-centric”) services this year, including an innovative approach to identity, a mobile web-based operating system, and an app store. As a non-profit answerable only to you, we’re in a unique position to take this on, without ulterior motives or fine print. Mitchell writes:

No other organization has 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.

The web you deserve

A web that recognizes “you,” knows who you are, and can respond accordingly is an exciting thing — so long as you’re the one in control of the experience.

That requires a trusted, ideally non-profit broker to help you manage your identity and set the rules for your data — with no ulterior motives or fine print.

This is different than the “bait and switch” model that now seems common in the cloud, luring us in with shiny services and products, only to reveal hidden costs, nasty fine print, or a cavalier approach to our personal data down the road.

The web — and you — deserve better. I’m excited that Mozilla is leading that charge in 2012.

Design digital badges for NASA, Intel, Disney-Pixar, the U.S. Department of Education and other leading organizations in the “Badges for Learning” competition. Deadline for entries is January 17.

Help the world level up with NASA, the MacArthur Foundation and Mozilla

Mozilla is seeking designers and developers to participate in the $2 million “Badges for Learning” competition. Participants will have the chance to design digital badges for more than 60 different leading organizations, all aimed at providing recognition for learning that happens on the web or outside of school.

Winners will receive funding from the MacArthur Foundation to make their designs a reality, plus the opportunity to collaborate with Mozilla and other leading organizations in education, industry and government.

The goal: supercharge 21st century learning by building a free, open source badge system that helps people around the world use the web to gain new skills and level up in their life and work.

Why digital badges for learning?

The web provides revolutionary new ways for people to learn, but it’s often difficult to get recognition for learning that happens outside of school.

Mozilla’s Open Badges project aims to help solve this problem, providing software that makes it easy for any organization to award digital badges for learning and achievements that happen online, outside the classroom, or just about anywhere.

Organized by the MacArthur Foundation and HASTAC, the “Badges for Learning” competition provides an ideal opportunity to test this software and approach in the wild, gathering leading organizations, designers and technologists to build badge systems together, all using Mozilla’s free and open source Open Badges Infrastructure.

Collaborators in the "Badges for Learning" competition

From robotics and digital literacy to botany and the environment

As part of the competition, more than 60 badges for learning projects are now open for your design and technical ideas on the competition web site. For example:

• NASA is seeking design and web development expertise for its new “NASA Robotics Badges.”
• The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration wants help with “Planet Stewards” badges that drive youth awareness around local environmental issues.
• The National Association of Manufacturers will issue badges to help learners gain the skills they need to find jobs in today’s high-tech workplace.
• Disney-Pixar is creating “Wilderness Explorers” badges that help youth become advocates for wildlife and nature-based exploration.
  
• The American Museum of Natural History will offer badges for science literacy.
• 4-H will award badges for youth around science, engineering, technology and applied math.
• Plus many, many more badge projects on the competition web site, all seeking design and web development expertise.

Design digital "Robotics Badges" for NASA

Who should enter?

Anyone with an interest in design. Graphic designers, web designers, product or industrial designers, educational technologists, digital humanities majors. What’s important at this stage of the competition is visual and conceptual creativity.

All of the badge projects will ultimately plug into Mozilla’s Open Badges Infrastructure, but it’s not necessary to possess the technical chops to implement at this stage.

All you need is to provide some early visual designs, plus a written description of how your badges will help participating organizations meet their requirements. Visual representations can include a video, diagram, screenshots, napkin sketches or anything that helps get your ideas across. (See the competition web site for complete details.)

Design "Wilderness Explorers" badges for Disney-Pixar

How to get involved

• Choose a badge project from this list on the competition web site. (These are “Stage 1″ winners and collaborators seeking your ideas for the “Stage 2″ design and tech portion of the competition.)
• Then submit your proposal here, with early visual ideas and a written description of how you’d tackle it.

You’re free to enter as many proposals as you’d like — but act quickly. The deadline for submissions is January 17, 2012. Winners will be announced March 2, 2012. Good luck!

Reports of Firefox’s death were greatly exaggerated.

For the last several weeks, we’ve seen a stream of speculative hype and forecasts of doom from many in the tech press. But today, all that’s been put to rest — like we always knew it would be:

• Google Renews Firefox Search Royalty Deal
• Mozilla and Google Sign New Agreement for Default Search in Firefox
• Mozilla in 2012: why the mission of Mozilla is as important as ever

And we’re just getting started

As Mozilla CEO Gary Kovacs points out, Mozilla is growing, leading, and doubling down on its non-profit mission in crucial new ways: working to create a web literate planet, building a generation of web makers, breaking commercial choke-holds through our vision for apps, setting mobile free, putting people in charge of their online identity, and pushing the web forward.

A nice triple for the open web

As Ryan Merkley pointed out, this week marks an interesting triple play for the open web:

1) Internet Explorer 6, the browser that once threatened to break the internet, is now officially slated for extinction.

Even Microsoft now concedes on its IE6 countdown site that there’s just no place for a non-standards compliant browser:

“…in an era of modern web standards, it’s time to say goodbye.”

Firefox created that era. We’re all now living in the open, standards-based and competitive world Mozilla fought to create.

2) Firefox 9 — the most awesome Firefox yet — just shipped today.

3) And the Mozilla Google deal is done, providing an important revenue stream to continue and expand our non-profit mission for years to come.

It’s a good day to be a Mozillian.

This post is the first in a new weekly series of round-ups that try to summarize that action, created together during our weekly Mozilla Web Maker calls.

The best of these items will feed into a new monthly “Mozilla Web Maker” newsletter. Please sign up here if you’d like to receive it.

Mozilla Popcorn named one of Top Web Developer Tools of 2011

ReadWriteWeb named Popcorn, Mozilla’s HTML5 toolkit for supercharging web video, one of its most promising web developer tools of 2011. “The future of Web media looks good.”

Help shape Hive NYC’s 2012 goals (hint: world domination)

Mozilla Hive NYC is a New York-based learning lab for Mozilla learning and education projects, helping youth acquire digital skills as they make and learn with Mozilla. Chris Lawrence writes about Hive NYC’s goals for 2012, and is seeking your input on how the organization can expand and grow.

Hive NYC is also working on a “how to” toolkit for creating a Hive-style learning network in your city, or a one-off “pop-up” style event similar to the “Hive London” event at last month’s Mozilla Festival.

Check out this fantastic video on Hackasaurus

Hack jams for youth, by youth

The Mozilla Hackasaurus team is training youth to help run hack jams for other youth, building on their recently-released Hacktivity Kit. Check out Jess Klein’s blog posts, and don’t miss these two stellar videos from youth:

• “What is Hackasaurus?” 
• “Why YOU should learn to Code”

Shakespeare goes social: Mozilla Popcorn in the classroom

Mozilla Popcorn supercharges web video, and the implications for learning and education are huge. Community member Kate Hudson’s terrific new demo shows what happens when you mash up social video and Shakespeare to create a powerful new teaching tool. The story got picked up by opensource.com.

Web making  and community building

Alina Mierlus writes about building the Mozilla community in Barcelona by bringing Mozilla’s web maker ethos to new groups:

Two years ago, Mozilla started to explore new ways to advance its mission, grow and rejuvenate the community, diversify our interest domains, and expand focus (go beyond Firefox).

Now, with programs and tools such as Hackasaurus and Popcorn that are getting stronger, and the work on Identity and Apps Ecosystem, there’s a huge opportunity to  build new community (both local and global), inspire others, and promote a new way of working and building relationships.

Stay in touch

Want to stay up to date on what the Mozilla Web Maker community is up to?

• Join our weekly community calls. They’re fun, fast-paced and open to all.
• Follow us through @Mozilla
• Sign-up to receive email updates and our new monthly “Mozilla Web Maker” bulletin.
• Like us on Facebook.
• Join Mozilla.

These people are on Planet Mozilla. Are you?

The Mozilla Foundation is growing rapidly, and producing lots of work that the rest of Mozilla wants to know more about. So I often get asked:

“Can you help <awesome new colleague> get added to Planet Mozilla?“

To make the process easier, here are some ridiculously simple instructions for accomplishing this fun and rewarding task. Soon, the entire Mozilla universe will be kept gloriously up to speed on your most important blog posts — with updates, milestones, and “a ha!” moments for miles!

“What is Planet Mozilla?”

Planet Mozilla is an aggregated blog of people working on Mozilla projects. Think of it as the main Mozilla fire hose. It’s important that you surface your most important work here for everyone to see.

For more context — and detailed instructions on getting added to Planet Mozilla — please see: “Everything you ever wanted to know about Planet Mozilla.”

“But this says I have to file a bug in Bugzilla. That sounds scary.”

I know. But don’t worry: it’s really not that bad, and nothing will break or bite.

To get added yourself to Planet Mozilla, go ahead and file your bug here. (This link makes it easy for you to file your bug in the right place.)

What do I have to include in my bug?

You clearly didn’t read “Everything you ever wanted to know about Planet Mozilla,” did you?!

The bug needs to include three things:

1. Your blog’s URL and the URL for the feed you want included
2. A short bio that we can use to announce your addition on the Planet Mozilla weblog
3. Meet the approval requirements explained here.

“How do I make sure only the right posts show up on Planet Mozilla?”

Good question. You may blog about lots of stuff, but you only want the most relevant posts to show up on Planet Mozilla — so you don’t drown your colleagues with poems about your dog, reflections on Nietzche, Lego collection, etc.

We use “tagged feeds” to accomplish this. So that, for example, only blog posts you tag “Mozilla” will show up on Planet Mozilla.

“How do I figure out what the URL for my tagged feed is?”

If you’re using WordPress, there’s helpful documentation on this here.

For my own blog, for example, my “Mozilla” tagged feed is:

http://openmatt.wordpress.com/tag/mozilla-2/feed/

“Can one of my posts show up on multiple planets and blogs?”

Yes. You may end up syndicating your posts to multiple planets. So that if you tag your post “Mozilla,” “Hackasaurus,” and “Badges,” it will automatically show up on:

• Planet Mozilla
• Planet Open Badges
• Planet Hackasaurus

This makes it easy for you to ensure your posts show up in multiple relevant places, without having to manually cross-post or copy / paste, etc. It also makes it easy for you to do your writing and posting using your own personal preferred blogging tools or platform. Like WordPress, Tumblr or whatever.

“How do I get added to those other planets?”

Each planet has their own protocol and process for getting added. More documentation on other Mozilla Foundation planets will follow soon. Getting added to Planet Mozilla is the most important, so start there.

Stuck? Got questions?

• join one of our weekly “Mozilla Web Maker” community calls and ask there. They’re open to all.
• email me at matt [at] mozillafoundation [dot] org
• tweet me at @openmatt

What light through yonder Popcorn-powered window breaks?

What can “social video” do for learning?

The hyper-talented Kate Hudson (co-founder of openjournalism.ca, learning lab shepherd for the Knight-Mozilla project, and a designer on the Mozilla Festival data journalism handbook project) has made an outstanding “Popcorn Shakespeare” demo that highlights the potential of Mozilla Popcorn for learning and education.

I think we’re seeing the birth of a new genre of interactive film — “hyper-video,” “social video,” or pop-up video on steroids — that will revolutionize multimedia in the classroom, and maybe even the lingua franca of learning in general.

Using the web to blend moving images, interaction and context

“Popcorn Shakespeare’s” ingeniously simple user experience: watch video of a Shakespeare performance, then move your mouse away at any point to pause the playback and get help with specific terms or passages you don’t understand. (e.g., “What does ‘Hie thee hither‘ or ‘the golden round‘ mean?”) You can also dig deeper into context or notes from your instructor or peers.

But its more than a glossary tool. You can also navigate the video by clicking directly on portions of the the text (similar to Mark Boas’ work with hyperaudio). Specific terms and passages also get their own URL, so you can skip directly to specific scenes for further study — and begin to “quote” and link to video as easily as you quote text.

Kate Hudson at the Mozilla Festival in London last month

Delivering context and metadata only when you want it

In Tuesday’s weekly Mozilla Web Maker call (which are open to all — please join us), Kate explained that the demo was inspired by seeing other students struggle with the language in Shakespeare’s plays, and the difficulty of looking up every word in a glossary as it occurs in performance. What makes her demo so ingenious is the way she solves this problem with dead simple UX: mouse away and the video stops, mouse back and it seamlessly resumes.

That simple touch helps make the surrounding tools and context timely and relevant, avoiding the “everything but the kitchen sink” problem of many early Mozilla Popcorn demos. Instead of overwhelming viewers with too much information, Popcorn Shakespeare gives you metadata only when you want it.

Turning “lean back” couch potato-ism into “lean forward” learning and interaction

For me, Kate’s demo speaks to the larger potential of social video in the classroom: turning a formerly passive activity (video watching) into an interactive and social experience. This can allow educators to speak the multimedia language that’s native to most learners, while at the same time making it a more engaging, “lean forward” experience than sitting in a darkened room watching some one-way film.

It’s way beyond the educational videos of our youth — transforming video into a canvas for making, learning and playing with moving images and light.

Making your own social video

And of course, the goal is to make it easy for learners to make these social videos themselves, not just consume the work of others. Kate used the more developer-focused and heavy lifting Popcorn.js to produce her Shakespeare demo.  But the more user-friendly “Popcorn Maker” — which just shipped version 0.1 — aims to make it easy for non-developers, filmmakers and youth to make their own social video mash-ups as well, transforming reformed couch potatoes everywhere into web-made movie makers.  “O brave new world, / That has such people in’t!“

• See also: “Social video” and the 21st century classroom

In my very first job interview two years ago with Mozilla’s chief lizard wrangler, Mitchell Baker, she continually drove home the point that one of Mozilla’s core assets — almost as valuable as the Firefox brand itself — is a unique way of working.

It’s an open source approach to collaboration that aspires to be:

• An open meritocracy. Where the best ideas count more than your place in an org chart.
• Focused on building and doing. There’s a “let’s get stuff done” ethos that is refreshing for people coming from more bureaucratic backgrounds.
• Mission-focused. Doing good. Answering to people, instead of just a bottom line. Making the kind of technology you’d want to use yourself — instead of finding ways to put consumers in a headlock or make a quick buck.

“Finding our people”

Part of what I’m finding inspiring about my job these days is watching these values resonate with new people and communities.

Take this post from Jon Vidar, a 2011 Knight News Challenge winner and leader of The Tiziano Project. He described attending the Mozilla Festival earlier this month as “finding my people.”

[As a news technology innovator,] often I am met with glazed-over eyes, or questions of “How much it is going to cost” and “What are the returns?”

When I am able to get past this and connect with someone who truly understands innovation, I am often stone-walled at the point of implementation by bureaucratic red tape or contracting processes that are as out-of-date as the systems we are trying to replace.

At the Mozilla Festival in London, however, I found my people.

By its nature, the festival paired journalists, creatives and technologists so that, in real-time, as ideas were being conceived, they were also being prototyped.

Jon’s post reminded me of what Jade Davis said about the Mozilla Festival last year:

I’ve finally found the people who understand my work — and are doers, not just talkers.

Making stuff vs. talking about stuff

Mark Surman has been writing a lot lately about creating a generation of web makers with Mozilla.

Posts like Jon’s and Jade’s help give an added sense of why that proposition resonates with people, and of the social potential of like-minded makers and doers finding each other and recognizing themselves as a community.

There’s something about the social and economic moment we find ourselves in that makes this approach to collaboration and change strike a chord. I think it’s the combination of both idealism and focused pragmatism — “more hammer, less yammer” — that’s novel and appealing to people.

A growing number of us are disappointed by the lack of values, short-sighted thinking and inertia that have come to characterize too much of the working world. But we’re also exhausted by endlessly talking about ideas or solutions without clear outlets for getting much done as a result.

The social media overload Fail Whale

Social media and blah, blah, blah

Sometimes it feels like social media and tech actually compound this problem. Many of us now feel like we’re drowning in data and talk, especially email. Talk is cheap — and getting cheaper all the time.

The net result is a growing hunger for tools, events, community and practice that helps us build and make and get stuff done — instead of just more blah blah blah.

I think that’s part of what makes events like the Mozilla Festival and Moz Camps unique, and a big part of the growth potential for our community and non-profit brand.

Building a benevolent do-ocracy

Mozilla is certainly not perfect at it — and building a temporary event that embodies these values is a lot easier than building an entire organization or world that runs on those principles.

But it’s interesting to see newcomers feel like they’ve found “their kind of people.” Like an invisible tribe that’s recognizing itself.

And it also open up an intriguing theory of change for Mozilla and our partners: shaping the future by gathering together a generation of people who will design, prototype and build it together.