My expectations for MozCamp Europe, Berlin.
I have only a few days to accept the invitation I received for attending the Mozilla European Contributors meeting in Berlin, November 12 – 13. I’m still asking myself about what I can get from there or which is the value I can add to the event.
Given that the event is scheduled in a relatively busy week (right after the Mozilla Festival and another Digital Humanities event in Barcelona), I was thinking seriously – what would be worth my time to attend? .
I’ve been participating to a number of Mozilla Contributor events (from European, Balkans Mozcamps; to Summit and Fossdem(s)). It’s fantastic to (re)meet the other people in the project, talk and see what they do in their locale. But, at the same time, there is a high risk to transform all those contributor meet-ups in a pleasant routine, which is the opposite of the “extremely fast changing process” that the web, the organization and even the community is facing.
I remember that 2 years ago, in Prague, I started a discussion about “remixing the Mozilla Manifesto” and I attended some thoughtful sessions around open web and back then, the early idea of Drumbeat. It was an incredible experience to be in those groups, taking a lot with me after the event.
And since the last MozCamp, both my focus and vision on Mozilla as a project have changed a bit. In those 2 years I’ve seen a few new communities rising up, met dozens of new Mozillians and I’m continuously meeting new people that share the same values as us and need to find their place in the Mozilla community.
Mozilla Eu contributors (and the Project in general) have a tremendous opportunity to meet face to face, once a year (an opportunity that many open source / free culture projects do not always have). For this, I think that Mozillians should take seriously the emphasis on “generated value” (for both participants and organization as a whole) .
Following, I’ll try to summarize in 3 points my expectations from the next MozCamp event:
Collaboratively making of the agenda
And no, by collaboratively, I don’t mean that volunteers can apply to give presentations or organize a session.
Doing the event collaboratively means to be allowed to participate from the point 0 – from identifying the *problem*, why we get together there, what do people expect / want to add, which is the aim, giving the critical moment in the community.
Collaboratively also means that anyone can have his/her say, that the event can be hacked depends on how things evolves and/or use tools Etherpad/a special mailing lists to add feedback/suggestions during the preparation process.
More open spaces – and make sure that if a participant wants to host his own brainstorming/hacking/prototyping session he or she will have a space. It often happens to get ideas on site (the result of being in the same place with so many people).
Community-based
The last events tend to have the most of the presentations/sessions led by community members with an employee status (that could indirectly create a top-down/formal ambient that kills potential community innovation, great ideas or slow-down the community enthusiasm). Even though I’m in favor of not differentiating between volunteers/employees/collaborators (all are community peers) I think that a balance is necessary.
Listen and give mentorship when needed. Just that! It’s much more in the community spirit than trainings (although would be fantastic to have event facilitators trainings).
There are mostly European core contributors and maybe some new ones - Inspire trust and discuss in open.
Focus on the essential
I know that 2 years since the last MozCamp is much and exists the tendency to cover everything in Mozilla (Firefox) project but, at the same time, trying to do everything is not the most effective solution. We currently experience some deep problems in the community, such as:
*** centralized l10n model and leak of outside participation in the process;
*** people leaving the community (which is normal after a few years of contribution) and “the problem” of finding replacement or creating space for others to contribute/lead;
*** a still unclear image of Mozilla’s Culture / community member motivation.
Although I see the Community and Development track interesting, there are still things that don’t convince me (such as a more elaborated page w/ what peers from community would love to see in there).
As a one concrete thing, I would be mostly interested in MozSpaces, because I believe that this could be an important component in nurturing a community learning/development path. And not only the “official” MozSpaces, but open and coworking spaces in general – and how we could interact/engage w/ other communities in there and spread the Mozilla’s culture, how to design activities and events and build new spaces for other people (and new Mozillians) to participate.
The topic for this year is “Many voices, one Mozilla” – I really hope to see this a productive and solution design oriented meet-up. And as a fellow Mozillian says: “Stop Yammering and Start Hammering!”.
“A small flag for every mission and a big flag for all” – Why GlobalMelt?
Within Mozilla community we’ve been talking for the last months about engaging users, growing the circle of participation and creating a movement for the (Open) Web. I know that similar discussions are going on in other open/free/libre culture and software movements as well. It is a common need – keep users, engage them, empower them, and educate the newcoming ones. I think it’s actually something that Free Software movement has been missing for a long time – writing for the user and include them in the community circle.
During our first session at GlobalMelt, a question from one of the participants got my attention: “Why Open and Free culture is still considered a subculture?”.
Which are the barriers that still keep us from being a worldwide movement, from being louder about the principles, values and critical importance of community driven initiatives? When starting to think about GlobalMelt, a few months ago, I nurtured in my mind the things I’ve been challenging myself when working with various free/open technology communities:
Be (more) like the Web.
The Web was built in open, was build to be hacked, decentralized and allow people to build things, free the imagination. How could we replicate the DNA of the web and use its “hackability” propriety when building communities and event formats? But how about increasing the level of complexity on the way? Communities often start with complex things and involuntarily place barriers between them and the audience. The same happens with events. The web and the overall Internet culture teaches us those things.
From the “Internet memes” we could learn how easy is to replicate (and modify) the message, the information we want to send, but also how different it is perceived among various publics (and as more hackable is the message, the easier is arriving to a larger and diverse audience). We need only to know how to pack that message in order to be replicated.
Common knowledge base! The more you share, the more you receive.
Sharing knowledge and put ideas together has always helped to spur innovation. Wikipedia itself is one of the proofs of what the crowd can build.
We are living in the collaborative age, where the valuable and things are created by mixing ideas together. Can we mix our ideas, knowledge, crowd brainstorm in order to create new event frameworks, put together “tips&tricks” and “how-tos”?
Thought leadership and leadership as a behaviour.
Growing the circle of leaders is always a challenge. It is a continuous issue that sometimes generates conflicts in our communities, makes people quit and newbies stay away. At GlobalMelt, participants at Brain Drain – why we leave communities, offered something worth to reflex on: “leadership behavior that can be adopted and not permanently occupied. Leadership behavior not coupled to person but to actions. Conversely, empowered to participate, to exit”.
Growing the circle of participation. Towards decentralized communities through events.
We need more people! There is a huge need to grow the base of contributors, of people who participate and build, even in a simple way. Anyone should have something to say. That is one aspect that also many open technology communities are focused on right now. For the last few years we’ve seen a decrease in the number of contributors and participants in different projects (eg. Wikipedia editors, Mozilla and other free software projects).
We have noticed how some communities are becoming more and more centralized, how most of the events were mainly focused on tech contributors and, indirectly, how unusual suspects have been progressively excluded. But can a revival of collaborative, small, face to face events act as a catalyst and make communities become more decentralized and action-oriented?
We went to GlobalMelt, with a common goal – learning more about peer-driven movements and what we could do and share in terms of best practices in in-person events organizing. And that started since the first day with a series of questions. Through discussions and collaborative sessions, we tried to find answers, come up with creative solutions and simple ways for making our events more participative, funny, interesting, hackable and so, keep the community healthy.
For me, it was an amazing experience to sit-down in a room with ~ 30 folks who share the same interest and love for technology, art, community and events and also, made me realize that we need to meet and do events often, keep the energy going on.
So, what’s next for GlobalMelt?
I see this kind of workshop as an amazing party where anyone participates with ideas and takes the outcomes. It is like the web, nobody owns it, we only have to make it grow and make sure it could be replicated, improved and then explore more complex issues.
Approaching events was indeed the best for this first workshop! But in the future, I see as topics: incentives and badges online, creative engagement campaigns, tips on how to spread a message etc. . I was even thinking that workshops such as GlobalMelt could be a good opportunity to incentivise event organizers and community builders.
But, it is better to keep walking with small steps.
First of all, we need to keep growing the existent documentation. It is a valuable information/tips&tricks/how to for events that can be improved and then used by anyone.
Experiment some of those tips at your own events and share with everyone how it went.
Replicate the GlobalMelt locally and document it. It would be really interesting seeing xMelt in the next couple of months (where x is a city, region etc.). There are some preparations for a Catalan/BarcelonaMelt 
.
Revive the subculture! When thinking to do an event, take in consideration audiences that you normally don’t think at. There may be plenty of groups considering themselves a subculture. Can we, the open and free subculture, change the future?
In the end, I want to send some kudos to Michelle Thorne, who help making possible this event and wrote an awesome follow-up, Allen Gunn (for helping us facilitate the entire event! I always, always learn something new from him!Thanks Gunner!), Alek and Joanna (for the logo and t-shirts), Solana (for hosting the party), SJ , Mark Surman and Mozilla Foundation, Studio70. And, last but least, to all participants!
What makes a movement? Users? (Mozilla) Local groups?
Last week, Mark Surman wrote a couple of articles about Join Mozilla initiative. I was not very surprised as probably other fellows, since I knew about this from Whistler Summit.
We talked during engagement sessions about different ways to make Mozilla more visible as a movement for the (open) Web and for the commons.
Indeed, this is something that Mozilla needs now, critical for the Web and for a healthy community of contributors and users. .
Bogo wrote in his last post wondering about the role of people who will join Mozilla and how they will connect with the community, how they will become advocates for the open web.
LUGs were an example of movements created around users and a software platform, which built a strong base of evangelists and open source advocates some time ago, including myself.
I was 16 when I first attended a first Linux Install Fest and started running the first Linux Users Group in my city with some friends, just for fun. I had no idea about free software, Commons, open source, etc. and I was able to only write 2 or 3 commands in the terminal.
LUGs were engaging, easy to join, and nobody asked you about your experience. City-based groups helped to arrange monthly or bi-weekly meet-ups. The main aim was getting people to use the operating system and helping beginners to fix their problems and offer support.
InstallFest-like events, with non-fixed agenda, no slides or presentations, helped to set up the dynamics, and make both experienced and unexperienced users to attend.
During the years, I organized myself a couple of InstallFests/Hackfests and other low or 0 budget events, connected with other users and LUGs across the country, revitalized the group from my faculty and extended it all around city, in hacking camps, workshops and open source conferences around the country, unified the forces faculty’s web group and start organizing more diverse events, wrote articles in community and school magazines.
Community centers, co-working spaces, Students house, laboratories, libraries and coffees or empty spaces in the underground Faculty’s building usually served for hosting the meet-ups and local events.
In a few years this movement brought new users, from power users to advocates of the platform and, indeed, influenced a lot its adoption on servers and embedded devices. But also, it formed advocates for other free software projects and kept the hacker culture alive.
LUGs offered you the freedom to choose, to stay as a simple user or go further. It also created this affinity between communities and people sharing the same principles, so connecting to people from outside your country became far easier.
I never became an active contributor in a Linux distribution, a localizer or package maintainer, because I wasn’t too comfortable with writing code, but that didn’t made me to not feel part of the movement or name myself a Linux Users group member.
So users are never “death souls” in the community, as far as they are engaged and empowered.
Hopefully, Join Mozilla! will offer all the support and material to turn Firefox users into platform advocates and a strong voice for the (open) Web. It is a chance for current Mozilla communities to build the user engagement efforts and start facilitating and supporting in a creative and participatory way Firefox users in all cities.
As LUG how-to says: “Computer user groups are not new. In fact, they were central to the personal computer’s history: Microcomputers arose in large part to satisfy demand for affordable, personal access to computing resources from electronics, ham radio, and other hobbyist user groups. Giants like IBM eventually discovered the PC to be a good and profitable thing, but initial impetus came from the grassroots.”
PS: Happy to see this open, so all Mozillians from community can contribute to build the program through Mozilla community marketing calls (and on #marketing IRC channel): http://wiki.mozilla.org/JoinMozilla .