Drumbeat/overview

This page provides a strategic overview of Drumbeat. It is based on these widely circulated slides. It changes often, and feedback is welcome.

1. Vision

The internet has become our global commons: a critical public resource that more than a billion people use to learn, innovate, trade, befriend and play. We envision a century ahead where this shared resource grows even richer and more vibrant. For this to happen, we must continue to build and operate an internet that is:

• Open. Built on technologies that anyone can study, use or improve without asking permission.
• Participatory, fueled by the ideas and energy of 100s of millions of people posting content everyday.
• Decentralized in both architecture and control, ensuring continued choice and diversity.
• Public much like a public square, with space not just for commerce but also for vibrant social and civic life.

Of course, this vision faces many challenges. Current examples: control over our digital identities and data is centralizing; and the growing mobile internet is far less open than the one on our desktop. At a more basic level, few people take the time to consider the internet as a public resource. They simply take it for granted, like air. Drumbeat is about gathering a critical mass of people address challenges like these.

2. Mission

Mozilla Drumbeat exists to explain, protect and improve the internet as a public resource. It's about starting a drumbeat around the world -- one where everyone can help to raise awareness, generate new ideas and get involved in making the internet better. Mozilla Foundation plays a critical leadership role: framing key internet issues and growing the community that forms the heart of Drumbeat. older versions

3. Goals

If Mozilla Drumbeat succeeds, the idea that internet as a public resource will be mainstream. More and more people will make choices about technology and online life that sustain -- or even improve -- this resource. With this aim in mind, the Drumbeat community should focus on three goals:

• Awareness: Widespread public understanding that the internet is a public resource.
  • result -> more informed web use, ready to take action and generate new ideas.
• Action: Large scale, decentralized volunteering and participation on big web issues.
  • result -> web becoming healthier, safer, more resilient.
• New ideas: Critical internet issues focused and clear, practical new solutions on the table.
  • result -> responding to internet challenges more quickly, generatively.

The best Drumbeat campaigns (projects? themes?) touch on all of these goals, starting with awareness and then inviting people to take action and generate new ideas.

4. Strategy

The Drumbeat strategy mixes online and on the ground activities. Web campaigns. Local meetings. A yearly event for thoughts leaders. The aim is to get people everywhere thinking and doing around the idea of the internet as a public resource.

Specific campaigns combine these activities with a simple idea or emotional connection to the internet. A passion for social media. A concern about online privacy. A longstanding commitment to a civic cause. These ideas provide a foundation for talking about the bigger picture of the internet as a public resource, and eventually for action and the generation of new ideas.

4.1 Overall Approach

At a functional level, Mozilla Drumbeat is built around three core elements plus a modest grants program. The elements are:

1. Online - Bongo: simple and helpful email newsletters as a way to make initial contact plus online campaigns for people who want to be more involved.
2. On the ground - Conga: local community events, demos and discussions where people learn about Drumbeat themes and prototype their new ideas.
3. Yearly event - Tympani: annual ideaswap / skillshare / festival, showcasing the best ideas and setting an agenda for the coming year.

These activities form a platform of sorts, providing a framework for all Drumbeat campaigns. At an awareness level, they will help us to engage large numbers of people. At the action and idea generation levels, they will give members of the Drumbeat community a chance to invent solutions, write content and create campaigns. In the process, these activities will help time building up new community leaders who will make our drumbeats louder and spread it further. full description of approach

What makes a good drumbeat?

Focusing on the right themes and campaigns will be essential to the success of Drumbeat. These criteria are designed to assess whether an idea can make a 'good drumbeat':

• Fit. Echoes ideas we're trying to champion through product, matches Mozilla's participatory, decentralized approach.
  • Is this too narrow? Should we say 'echoes ideas and values outlined in the Mozilla Manifesto'
• Appeal. Attractive both to key partners and potential community members, will attract significant levels of participation.
• Leverage. Can use leverage to reach scale, especially building on existing Mozilla assets.
• Timing. Good timing in terms of external environment, and start up time is not too long.
• Impact. Concretely leads to a better web, or plays major role in establishing 'internet as public resource' concept.

While Mozilla will put significant resources in to Drumbeat, it will also be important to assess the fundraising potential of each theme or campaign idea.

4.3 Possilbe 2010 Themes

Eventually, Drumbeat campaigns will come from everywhere. From people who use the internet in very different ways. From different parts of the world. In many many languages. This may happen quickly, or slowly. But it will happen.

There is, however, a need to start somewhere. Mozilla Foundation engaged 100+ people in a brainstorm over the last few months to define this starting point. The result is four possible Drumbeat themes for 2010:

1. We make the web. Engage bloggers, photographers, etc. Use data to visualize the web they are making. Help them tap into more open tech and content.
2. Your web. Your data. Thought leadership and P2P consumer education about taking control of our identities and data in the cloud.
3. Growing the civic web. Link the public resource nature of the internet with new civic uses of the web like education, healthcare and human rights.
4. The next 100 years of public media. Collaborate w/ orgs like BBC and PBS to help audiences and content creators shape the future of public media.

Individual pages for each of these campaigns include a description of goals, audience and activities. There is also an assessment of each against five Drumbeat campaign criteria outline above -- fit, appeal, leverage, timing and impact.

The theme pages are by no means final or rigid plans. Each theme is designed to include significant space for people to come up within new activities inside of it. Also, it is quite likely that people will come up with and start their own Drumbeat campaigns outside these themes. Some ideas are on this brainstorm page.

full campaign list of campaigns and scenarios brainstormed so far

6. Proposal for getting started

There is no way we can fully cover all these themes in one year. However, we also need to carve out a wide enough space that we can experiment, learn and even fail with some of our ideas. We also need the space to respond opportunistically to trends and ideas emerging around the internet. With this in mind, the following is proposed as a high level Drumbeat 2010 plan:

• Focus on We make the web as the Drumbeat core pilot activity. Use this to test the model and build community. (70 - 90% of effort)
• Do a smaller amount of work on Your web. Your data., focusing on thought leadership and being ready to turn up the dial on larger scale engagement if opportunity strikes. (10 - 30% of effort)
• Undertake exploratory work on Growing the civic web and / or The next 100 years of public media, assessing potential for 2011 and being ready to move quickly if the opportunities are bigger than we think. (up to 10% of effort each)

The idea here is to create a dynamic framework that allows Drumbeat to evolve and iterate the program during its start up year. The team and advisory group would use this framework to navigate through the course of 2010.

--

See also: main Drumbeat project page, including links to blog postings, notes and background materials.