Events/MozCamp+Template

MozCamp+ A local celebration of the open web

MozCamp+ is a series of local events for people passionate about the open web. Each event includes discussion, hands-on-demos and collaborative scheming about ways to promote and protect the open participatory nature of the internet. Events happen in any city where local Mozillians want to organize them. Local bloggers, designers, hackers, creative commonors and other open web aficionados present and participate.

Doc Status - v 0.02 - December 23 2008

This is the first revised version of this document. It includes comments from Gandalf, Zak, Mary and others. It's now ready for wider comment. Also, hopefully we can start picking some dates and building sample local event agendas as a way to more rigorously test the concept.

Audience

People who live and work on the web, but who do not yet have a channel celebrate and protect the things that keep it open. These people include:

• Firefox fans and people who informally evangelize for us
• Students, including campus reps but beyond
  • especially students in comp sci, design, media studies
• Bloggers, especially those in areas related to tech (e.g. digital culture)
• Free culture, creative commons type
• Web designers and people in the web marketing space (going beyond tech people here, so not just people we normal reach w/ developer evangelism)
• People who would normally go to BarCamp, CaseCamp, DemoCamp etc.

Many of these people share Mozilla values, or have their own definition of the open web. But they don't yet feel involved in Mozilla. They should.

--

As context: these are the people who sit in the 'community of interest' (or 'values') layer here:

http://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2008/07/07/concentric-circles-of-community/

and here

http://commonspace.wordpress.com/2008/07/11/more-on-mozilla-communities-circles-and-maps/

We want to create a bigger 'community of action' by giving people new ways to participate.

Goals

Build a 'community of action' that makes it possible for a broader number of people to get involved in Mozilla by ...

• Giving people a chance to talk about and understand 'What is the open web and why does it matter?'
• Providing an update on where the Internet is headed as we move to mobile and into the cloud, and sharing an intimate view Mozilla's plans in these areas.
• Introducing topics like values, freedom, privacy in relation to Internet to those who never thought about them.
• Creating concrete opportunities for people to start participating in Mozilla and other open web projects (e.g. start translating the Manifesto).
• Building better links amongst people within the broader Mozilla community (e.g Firefox marketing person and a Firefox add-on developer) by inviting them to co-host local events like this.
• Sharing hands on skills that give people a richer Internet experience: how to use wikis, blogs, how to search and control their privacy.
• Creating a sense of 'belonging' to the Mozilla community for people who don't have that yet.

There is clearly a movement-building piece here, although it's tough to describe that. But that is what is at the root here. This includes everything from stirring people up, to giving them something they can volunteer and work on, to getting people organized and connected so they can continue to talk later.

Session ideas and topics

At this point, we're only trying to reach people already passionate about the web. This is still a quite varied group. We need to create a framework with a buffet of topics and corresponding materials so that local MozCamp+ organizers can cater to a variety of audience mixes audience. This might include:

• An intro piece on what is the open web and why does it matter?. Depending on audience, could be more presentation vs. more discussion. Something similar emerged for the 'open everything' events Mark was a part of. People in many cities used similar slides, and shared audio of their talks. Also participants had a chance to talk w/ each other about the slides after the talk. (needs template presentation)

• Inspiring, TED-like talk about where the open web is headed, and what the threats are. This could look at emerging big issues like mobile and data. This is the 'update' mentioned in the goals above.

• 5 minute speedgeek / lightning presentations demoing cool new stuff from Mozilla and open web projects. Everything from Firefox to new stuff from Labs to audience specific add on packs (like F-Y-FF), platform projects like Miro ... and maybe even local open source or open web projects (e.g. Creative Commons, Electronic Frontier Foundation).(needs template explaining how to organize)

• Hands on workshops by whatever Mozilla community people are around. Localization. Marketing. Manifesto. Add on development. Also, similar hands on workshops by other local people and projects. Embedding CC metadata. Running online participatory projects. An so on.

• Broader talks about what happens on the web and how Joe Average can benefit from it. What are website aggregators, RSS, wikis, social networks, cloud text editors etc. Also, educate people on how to use Internet safely and wisely. What is phishing and how to avoid it. What is vendor lock in and how to avoid it. What are data format locks and how to escape them. (may need templates, but lower priority)

• Discussions or workshops on how to promote these benefits of the open web locally. Working w/ city council. Working w/ schools. Evangelizing to the media. This might result in other events or evangelism that participants take out to a broader audience. (will need to make sure these happen in some early events, and then blog and document so others get the idea)

• Small sprints or hands on projects with specific local relevance, like localizing the Manifesto, developing an add on or coming up with an open web strategy for a local NGO, school or government department. Need the right local people around to make this happen. (could template or have example sprints organized)

• A strong party and social component where people just get to know each other and have fun.

We also need to merge in the Mozilla Labs Concept Series stuff. Need specific ideas from Aza and Atul on this.

Format

Like BarCamp, but better facilitated and more theatre. Or, maybe like BarCamp + TED + Maker Faire. Which means:

• BarCamp = participatory and conversational

• TED = A small number of very excellent, very short curated talks from community leaders on big picture issues and emerging technologies

• Maker Faire = there is a hands on community component where people build or write things together. Web sites. Add-ons. Manifesto translations.

In many cases, these would happen on the day before or after a regular MozCamp or local team meeting that was only for Mozilla people. The idea would be to take advantage of the fact that many Mozilla people are in the same town, to connect them to a broader public and to bring more people into the edges of our community.

Also important: these can be low or no cost other than the venue and food. The idea is you just throw a party when Mozilla people are in town and see who comes.

Customization

One of the most important elements of this recipe is customization. Think of how extensions can modify browsing experience.

Depending on what people shows up, what is important on the web at the time of the event, animators have to customize their event to serve the goals of MozCamp+.

We want to help by providing a platform for ideas, event themes, and place to leave feedback from previous events. We should allow preparing several flavors of the event, techie, informational, educational etc.

After each event we should get a kind of report from it together with feedback on what did work and what didn't, suggestions on improvements and what to avoid in the future. It should replicate itself and auto-improve over time.

For this customization model to work, we will need clear agenda and presentation templates, and a wiki that makes organizing easy. We can borrow alot of ideas from http://www.barcamp.org/. We will need a site like this soon.

Scheduled Events and 'Strawman' Agendas

<link to MozCamp+ events that we've schedule, or even to strawman agendas that show what this would look like in a particular city>