Summit2008/Notes/Identity Transcript

--- Log opened Wed Jul 30 23:53:10 2008
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23:53 <@fantasai> Mitchell: Plan to spend 10-15 min on question of Mozilla Identity
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23:53 <@fantasai> Mitchell: Look at stuff on flip charts, get an idea of where they fit, how do they fit
23:53 <@fantasai> Mitchell: ... discuss proposed goals
23:54 <@fantasai> Mitchell: I went through this tree. Didn't get any horrendous feedback saying it's wrong
23:54 <@fantasai> Mitchell: Things coming up lately, couple things that need to be represented that aren't
23:54 <@fantasai> Mitchell: One, community
23:54 <@fantasai> Mitchell: It flows through everything we do. In one sense it's implicit in that, in one sense it's missing.
23:54 <@fantasai> Mitchell: So how do we represent the idea of community in that/
23:55 <@fantasai> Mitchell: Do we consider it integral in every cell that we don't need to call it out, or does it need to be called out
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23:55 <@fantasai> Mitchell: Second thing is that the values from Manifesto aren't expressed in that diagram
23:55 <@fantasai> Mitchell: I'm not sure where they'd show up or how
23:55 <@fantasai> Mitchell: If they're roots, or if public benefit root picks them up
23:55 <@fantasai> Mitchell: But they are part of how we think about ourselves
23:55 <@fantasai> Mitchell: e.g. is privacy a root, since it's something we value
23:56 <@fantasai> David Ascher: One thing about community that's interesting is everybody uses the word to mean the different things
23:56 <@fantasai> David: I never use it in the singular
23:56 <@fantasai> David: People belong to Mozilla community, but also other communities. E.g. qa community, l10n community
23:56 <@fantasai> David: In these people know each other intimately
23:57 <@fantasai> David: Not like Mozilla community of 1/2 mill
23:57 <@fantasai> David: Community is interesting, but also a loaded term
23:57 <@fantasai> fantasai: maybe think of it as veins that run through the tree?
23:57 <@fantasai> Zak: ....
23:58 <@fantasai> Zak: When ppl talk about community, they're talking about peeers
23:58 <@fantasai> Zak: people who are working on the same project, even remotely
23:58 <@fantasai> Zak: How many people think of users as part of community?
23:58 <@fantasai> some raised hands
23:58 <@fantasai> Mitchell: .. goals and improving interaction is connection between different parts of Mozilla
23:58 <@fantasai> Mitchell: support working w/qa
23:58 <@fantasai> e.g
23:59 <@fantasai> David: One that's challenging about scale of Mozilla at this point
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23:59 <@fantasai> David: I don't think humans are evolved to work with this many people
23:59 <@fantasai> David: Hard to be in contact with thousands of people
23:59 <@fantasai> David: Our brains are not wired for that
23:59 <@fantasai> David: .. healthy relationships at scale
23:59 <@fantasai> David: So not everyboyd needs to know everybody else
--- Day changed Thu Jul 31 2008
00:00 <@fantasai> Atul:Question around who to trust around world of the internet
00:00 <@fantasai> Atul: A lot of users coming to internet know noting about it
00:00 <@fantasai> Atul: Intersting discussions about security. Users tend to assume that anywhere on the internet is dangerous
00:00 <@fantasai> Atul: In reality, I only visit a subset of the internet that I consider to be safe
00:01 <@fantasai> Atul: I will only choose to share my personal info with a small amount of that
00:01 <@fantasai> Atul: Goes into things like kind of software you download
00:01 <@fantasai> Atul: Firefox is a gateway to everything you put on your computer to some extent.
00:01 <@fantasai> Atul: How do you trust
00:01 <@fantasai> Atul: How do you know who /what to trust on the Internet.
00:01 <@fantasai> Atul: THere's no real sense of identity built on the internet.
00:01 <@fantasai> Atul: One thing I think about is doing something, something social. Social network so that my parents could say I trust my son, things that he does...
00:02 <@fantasai> Mitchell: You're talking about a more abstract concept of community
00:02 <@fantasai> Mitchell: A community of trust. A layer that is really different ...
00:02 <@fantasai> Mitchell: I can't figure out livechat
00:02 <@fantasai> (...?)
00:02 <@fantasai> Mitchell: Interesting set of identity, hard to represent as communities get more abstract
00:02 <@fantasai> Zak: If we had this biological model of what we are.
00:03 <@fantasai> Zak: Community is what we create, but also what we need.
00:03 <@fantasai> Zak: Same thing with values in manifest.
00:03 <@fantasai> Zak: Like we're trying to create the environment that we need
00:03 <@fantasai> Zak: create what's in the manifesto
00:03 <@fantasai> Zak: It's kinda like plants. They slowly changed the arth to be what they want it to be.
00:03 <@fantasai> Nicolas: It might be useful to separate community out into a noun and a verb
00:04 <@fantasai> Nicolas: The tree, you can almost put a title that says "THe Mozilla Community"
00:04 <@fantasai> Nicolas: One of the roots of the communmity, one of the shared practices, is about a community approach.
00:04 <@fantasai> Nicolas: About less hierarchical, about creating communities
00:04 <@fantasai> Nicolas: Community is a practice that Mozilla encourages.
00:04 <@fantasai> Nicolas: I think the practice of doing community is something, and the end result is the Mozilla Community
00:05 <@fantasai> Gandalf: There's a term for that, a participatory approach.
00:05 <@fantasai> Gandalf: You can look at hierarchical org or participatory org
00:05 <@fantasai> Gandalf: We're defiinitely a participatory org. Empowering participating approache
00:05 <@fantasai> Gandalf: I would stake community as a noune
00:05 <@fantasai> Gandalf: And participation as a verb
00:06 <@fantasai> Gandalf: It's hard enough to define ...
00:06 <@fantasai> Gandalf: Like David said, we have trouble remembering this many people
00:06 <@fantasai> Gandalf: You're in one hundred communities of two hundred million people
00:06 <@fantasai> Gandalf: you're in community of 200,000,000 ppl using FF
00:07 <@fantasai> David: I look at this picture and I completely understand it from my position, I know how pieces fit together
00:07 <@fantasai> David: I look back to several years ago to when I was a community member
00:07 <@fantasai> David: with a different day job
00:07 <@fantasai> David: and trying to figoure where I fit there, is a little intersting
00:07 <@fantasai> David: I think the roots are why I cared about Mozilla before I was really involved
00:07 <@fantasai> David: but other parts are not so relevant
00:07 <@fantasai> David: ....
00:07 <@fantasai> David: consumer products which are very focused on some smaller set of people
00:08 <@fantasai> David: If you're not close into Mozilla, which part of Mozilla are relevant to you are fuzzy and hard
00:08 <@fantasai> Mitchell: So I'd take from that namimg the whole thing THe Mozilla Community isn't quite right
00:08 <@fantasai> Mitchell: This leads me to think .. don't really have a clear vision of how this fits into community
00:08 <@fantasai> Mitchell: .. find it useful, but don't know how to merge it into that.
00:09 <@fantasai> Mitchell: either don't know how to visualize it in there, or maybe it's something else
00:09 <@fantasai> Gerv: Is there a correlation between the tree and the concentric circles of community?
00:09 <@fantasai> Gerv: E.g. ppl who are deeply involved, check into cvs, are an inner circle. people who use our code are an outer circle
00:10 <@fantasai> Gerv: The further out you go, the less the values in the roots are deeply held
00:10 <@fantasai> ?: It seems like there does need to be a place somewhere there.
00:10 <@fantasai> ?: Mozilla communities- you don't need to fit into and participate in all the branches to be part of it
00:10 <@fantasai> ?: I like the idea that we could label the whole metaphor community
00:11 <@fantasai> Guillermo: It's difficult to draw the concentric cirlces in the same image
00:11 <@fantasai> Guillermo: Maybe the tree rings
00:11 <@fantasai> Mitchell: I'm inclined to take these ideas back and see if we can merge them
00:11 <@fantasai> Mitchell: Or if we should keep them separate for awhile
00:12 <@fantasai> bsmedberg: I don't think the communmity belongs on that tree
00:12 <@fantasai> bsmedberg: I think shared goals or shared something define the community
00:12 <@fantasai> bsmedberg: but if you come up with the shared whatever we are, the community flows from that
00:12 <@fantasai> bsmedberg: saying that we are a community without having the sared goals is backwards to me
00:12 <@fantasai> Tiffney: I think we're going with this metaphore you can look as community as ecosystem
00:13 <@fantasai> Tiffney: You can't dissect the ecosystem from that picture
00:13 <@fantasai> summary of her comments: Community as ecosystem
00:13 <@fantasai> Zak: I can't figure out what other community from history we're like?
00:13 <@fantasai> Zak: There's no form to fill out, no creed. Maybe that's why we're confused as to what we are
00:14 <@fantasai> Gerv: The reason that's been possible is the zero-incremental cost of copying softare
00:14 <@fantasai> Gerv: 20 years ago nobody could reach 200 mill people with useful stuff
00:14 <@fantasai> Mitchell: the other thing that came up a lot is values
00:14 <@fantasai> Mitchell: Manifesto values, that don't overtly show up in that
00:14 <@fantasai> Mitchell: We could try to distill a few of them, and make them roots or branches or something
00:15 <@fantasai> Mitchell: One term I want to use, although it's overloaded, is user sovereignty
00:15 <@fantasai> Mitchell: Any thoughts?
00:15 <@fantasai> David: You could just point to manifest, or say manifesto values
00:15 <@fantasai> David: Manifesto describes a lot of values
00:16 <@fantasai> David: ... I hate to use the word morals
00:16 <@fantasai> David: there are some sort of moral underpinnings that drive ...
00:17 <@fantasai> fantasai: So what I'm seeing here is that the values in the roots are how we operate, and the values in the manifesto are things we value and want to create
00:17 <@fantasai> Mark: ....
00:17 <@fantasai> Mark: Thinking about where to put the values. We haven't used the leaves at all. There's unused real estate in the leaves
00:17 <@fantasai> Gerv: The tree starts small and grows more
00:17 <@fantasai> Gerv: So maybe the values are suspended in the air, what we're aiming up
00:18 <@fantasai> Eric: Talkign about community, and ecosystem. A forest of trees would represent our user base or community
00:18 <@fantasai> Eric: Maybe show that oure interested is civic benefit of the forest
00:19 <@fantasai> ?: If you're very far from trees they look very different from up close
00:19 <@fantasai> ?: Something to think about
00:19 <@fantasai> Zak: Also some people see trees as lumber
00:19 <@fantasai> ??: I feel the values belong at the roots, and maybe those attributes of Mozilla are something that belong as clouds
00:19 < silfreed> ^Zach
00:19 <@fantasai> ??: Raining down and enriching the growth of the tree
00:20 <@fantasai> fantasai: I don't think that matches, the roots really anchor this project/community
00:20 <@fantasai> Mitchell: One thing that's different about Mozilla is our focus on producing a product rather than being an advocacy organization
00:21 <@fantasai> Gandalf: I was thinking about what zak said, part of us considers users part of community or community itself, and others don't
00:21 <@fantasai> Gandalf: It would be a good idea to claim that the community is made up of people who consider themselves part of community
00:21 <@fantasai> s/?/Blizzard/
00:22 <@fantasai> Gandalf: So ppl who use product and consider themselves part of community are, and those who don't aren't
00:22 <@fantasai> Gandalf: It's a very open community
00:22 <@fantasai> Gandalf: anyone can decide to participate
00:22 <@fantasai> Mitchell: So you'd have a user base that was important to our effectiveness, but you wouldn't consider part of the community
00:22 <@fantasai> simon: ...
00:23 <@fantasai> simon: every little bit that you do, besides downloading thu/ff and installing it
00:23 <@fantasai> simon: things you do like telling your friend, this solftware is great you should use it
00:23 <@fantasai> simon: or pubishing a holiday calendar for sunbird
00:23 <@fantasai> simon: that makes you part of the community, whether you consider yourself part of the community or not
00:23 <@fantasai> Mitchell: We have a difference of opinion of whether we consier the user base part of the community or not
00:24 <@fantasai> Mitchell: we should be clear that it's different from other communities
00:24 <@fantasai> ?: Going back to Zak's point, .. distinguishes use from other kinds of nonprofits. Every effective nonprofit chooses a strategy.
00:24 <@fantasai> ?: E.g. EFF chose lawsuits as it's approach.
00:24 <@fantasai> Brian: We do have advocacy aorund a certain set of positions
00:25 <@fantasai> Brian: Our strategy is around a free product
00:25 <@fantasai> Brian: Because veryone would be tied to MS if there wasn't an alternative.
00:25 <@fantasai> Brian: We get user power from 1.0 lauch onwards
00:25 <@fantasai> Brian: The balls in our court to define that. How much are users a group that we want to involve?
00:25 <@fantasai> Mitchell: So we have some question of whether roots are roots or values are roots
00:25 <@fantasai> Mitchell: Any other thoughts on this?
00:26 <@fantasai> Mtichell: there was use real estate of leave
00:26 <@fantasai> Mitchell: I don't know where values goe on the tree
00:26 <@fantasai> s/Mitchell/ someone  else/
00:26 <@fantasai> ??:  ... people are here not because they care about making good products, but also they care about advancing values through these products.
00:26 <@fantasai> ??: the values are our goal
00:26 <@fantasai> ??: it's absolutely central, and the purpose of the products is to achieve that
00:27 <@fantasai> Mitchell: So I think values is the trunk.
00:27 <@fantasai> Mitchell: It currently says human interaction with internet
00:27 <@fantasai> Mitchell: but it's a certain type of interaction that we're dealing with
00:27 <@fantasai> Asa: We talk about values. We're not just advancing them, we're inventing them.
00:27 <@fantasai> Asa: We're inventing values for a new world on the net. It didn't used to have this value landscape.
00:27 <@fantasai> Asa: Tricky, because we're both advancing them and creating them
00:28 <@fantasai> Asa: both in terms of defining them, but also in creating them through products that advance those values
00:28 <@fantasai> Asa: If eel like our products are the embodiment of our values.
00:28 <@fantasai> Asa: We invtendt the values, then invented products to make them real
00:28 <@fantasai> Aa: It really is the bark that's over the whole tree
00:28 <@fantasai> Asa: Same way that community adn participation are
00:29 <@fantasai> Asa: We aren't participation because it's useful, but because we believe it's integral to the web
00:29 <@fantasai> Asa: For those two in particular, I'm opposed to making it an appendage
00:29 <@fantasai> Asa: They feel more like circulatory system.
00:29 <@fantasai> Zach: Where does innovation fit into this? We have this shared bias towards innovation, show me the code.
00:29 <@fantasai> ???: The roots feel like methods
00:30 <@fantasai> Mitchell: This would be a question, maybe it's historical
00:30 <@fantasai> Mitchell: My sense is that those methods are deep enough to be a sense of identity
00:30 <@fantasai> Mitchell: I think if you ask the people here, if you could create something that doesn't have that, wouldn't identify as Mozilla
00:30 <@fantasai> Gerv: So We can pull this tree metaphor every which way.
00:30 <@fantasai> Gerv: leaving aside the tree.
00:31 <@fantasai> Gerv: Things come out of your values via your methods to produce results
00:31 <@fantasai> Gerv: I don't think the participatory web is a result
00:31 <@fantasai> Gerv: It's a means to an end which is whatever the people participating get out of
00:31 <@fantasai> it
00:31 <@fantasai> Gerv: If that were true, perhaps the roots are the value,s the trunk are the things that are the things in the trunk
00:31 <@fantasai> Gerv: and what we make are the fruits
00:32 <@fantasai> Gerv: Maybe we need to step back away from the tree and think how they fit together, then put them back on the tree
00:32 <@fantasai> Guillermo: Maybe the values could be the ... the liquid inside the tree. the Sap
00:32 <@fantasai> Mitchell: So 2 proposals for changing tre
00:32 <@fantasai> Mitchell: question of how we work
00:32 <@fantasai> Mitchell: We're not going to use public benefit , shared asset, to get to the web would we still feel like Mozilla
00:33 <@fantasai> Mark: Theres a guy who put out a book called Two Bits, where he looked as open source movement
00:33 <@fantasai> Mark: He says that what's different from other social movments
00:33 <@fantasai> mark: Is that the values and the practices are embedded in each other
00:33 <@fantasai> mark: not just advocating values
00:33 <@fantasai> Mark: You kinda have to keep them, they're together
00:33 <@fantasai> Mark: they're in the roots is right
00:33 <@fantasai> Mitchell: Want to talk a bit about goals
00:34 <@fantasai> Look through bunch of stuff on goals
00:34 <@fantasai> Mitchell: Weren't a lot of comments syaing this is a terrible goal, take it off
00:34 <@fantasai> Mitchell: where we've got so far
00:34 <@fantasai> Mitchell: Firefox should continue, momentum, agreement there
00:35 <@fantasai> Mitchell: Not much comments on Mobile saying no. Most comments are why not already and here's how to do it
00:35 <@fantasai> Mitchell: Two things are data and information
00:35 <@fantasai> Mitchell: potentially most divisive
00:35 <@fantasai> Mitchell: Mozilla and open internet has another large set of ideas
00:35 <@fantasai> Mitchell: Just want to call out what came out from open internet
00:35 <@fantasai> Mitchell: then talk about data
00:36 <@fantasai> Mitchell: For mozilla as open internet and mozilla as community
00:36 <@fantasai> Mitchell: Some education and evangelism function, both internally and externally
00:36 <@fantasai> Mitchell: Internal ones captured best as
00:36 <@fantasai> Mitchell: There's some way that mozilla communities grow. Some ways that knowledge is implicit, but we don't make it explicit
00:36 <@fantasai> Mitchell: Example, small l10n team. How do you grow that team?
00:37 <@fantasai> Mitchell: We've done it tons of time, but there's no set of steps
00:37 <@fantasai> Mitchell: So there's no understood way to do it
00:37 <@fantasai> Mitchell: we do it well, but it's very ad-hoc
00:37 <@fantasai> MitchelL: e.g. I found my way in, but I odn't know how I did it, and I don't know how to help someone else
00:37 <@fantasai> Mitchell: Very strong intersest in figuring out how to be clear on what entry paths work, what are experiences are and how to use them.
00:37 <@fantasai> Mitchell: We know a lot of things
00:38 <@fantasai> Mitchell: about scale, l10n, upgrades, etc.
00:38 <@fantasai> Mitchell: What's path for Mozilla to spread that knowledge to those who want it?
00:38 <@fantasai> mitchell: reluctant to have too long list of goals, but that seems like something that should show up more explicitly
00:38 <@fantasai> Mitchell: Other thing ins emphasis on content. encourage open content creation on the internet
00:38 <@fantasai> Mitchell: i'd put them as a center piece of the open web or open internet
00:38 <@fantasai> Mitchell: Tools we should think about and think hard how to do them.
00:39 <@fantasai> Mitchell: Anything else missing?
00:39 <@fantasai> David: I like part about teaching the knowledge and skills that mOizlla has earned to outside
00:39 <@fantasai> David: Flips ide is we only get to open internet by collaborating with others
00:39 <@fantasai> David: one thing I try to figure out is how do we effectively learn from others, not just tell them hthis is what works?
00:39 <@fantasai> Mitchell: so learning to collaborate and inward bound learning
00:40 <@fantasai> Gerv: On content creation piece
00:40 <@fantasai> Gerv: Mark mad ea good point about content creation
00:40 <@fantasai> Gerv: THe project we are is composed of seamonkey, effectively
00:40 <@fantasai> Gerv: How do you create content for the web has hcanged a lot since days of NS4
00:40 <@fantasai> Gerv: Nowadays ppl wanting to put thoughts on web, just get a blog.
00:40 <@fantasai> Gerv: People that do more than that do ajax-based interactive websites
00:41 <@fantasai> Gerv: In one sense the content creation part is done.
00:41 <@fantasai> Gerv: blogs, cms, wiki
00:41 <@fantasai> Gerv: Or we're not done.
00:41 <@fantasai> Gerv: Do we make tools for putting ocntent on the web?
00:41 <@fantasai> Mitchell: Looks like Travel is taking over here
00:41 <@fantasai> ????: Last comments on where it goes and how to continue discussion?
00:42 <@fantasai> Mitchell: What re good ways to continue this conversation? Clearly not my blog?
00:42 <@fantasai> Mitchell: I'm the leader for this particular set of discussions.
00:42 <@fantasai> Mitchell: if nothing else send it to me
00:42 <@fantasai> Zak: Wiki?
00:43 <@fantasai> simon: .. blog
00:43 <@fantasai> Gerv: good thing about newsgroup is that it's newsgroup, mailing list, google group, rrs
00:43 <@fantasai> Mitchell: Will send mail to summit alias
00:43 <@fantasai> Mitchell: I do have a blog, do send comments :)
00:44 <@fantasai> Ctalbert: I was at OSCON last week
00:44 <@fantasai> ctalbert: One session from Intel was talking about three challenges on Internet
00:44 <@fantasai> ctalbert: And one challenge was data.
00:44 <@fantasai> ctalbert: and how Intel can help you integrate data on the net
00:44 <@fantasai> ctalbert: that made my skin crawl
00:45 <@fantasai> Mitchell: the ... is not privacy for each person
00:45 <@fantasai> Mitchell: My ability to protect my data when I want to, that's Foundation step
00:45 <@fantasai> MitchelL: Problem is most of you, most of us, will trade personal data for convenience and features
00:45 <@fantasai> Mitchell: We're all making those trades
00:45 <@fantasai> Mitchell And the conceptual issue is that most consumers want some data to be shared.
00:46 <@fantasai> MtichelL: and different people make different trads for how much data for how much free stuff
00:46 <@fantasai> Mitchell: A lot of consumers want things very dfferent
00:46 <@fantasai> Mitchell: Of course you can keep data private and not share.
00:46 <@fantasai> Mitchell: But when you want websites to use data for some things, that's hard
00:47 <@fantasai> Blizzard: One thing I learned with project I did was vast difference in expectations of privacy
00:47 <@fantasai> Blizzard: experience from all over spectrum
00:47 <@fantasai> blizzard: there's no common language. People don't even know how to think about it
00:47 <@fantasai> blizzard: we need to define that language, give them a wayt o talk about it
00:48 <@fantasai> blizzard: seems that education function has to be the first step
00:48 <@fantasai> blizzard: esp outside our space where we've thought about it
00:48 <@fantasai> blizzard: coming up with framework would be important
00:48 <@fantasai> Mitchell: Another set of posts lacking comments...
00:48 <@fantasai> Zak: I think Tiffney really nailed it when she called it an ecosystem.
00:49 <@fantasai> Zak: our ecosystem is thriving
00:49 <@fantasai> Zak: we care about our values, most ppl using firefox don't know and don't care
00:49 <@fantasai> Zak: the more we provide value, the more we get a chance to explain to them about privacy
00:49 <@fantasai> zak: tour product is our vehicle for our vlualues
00:49 <@fantasai> MitchelL: Advocating privacy and building a product that that allows it is dfferent
00:50 <@fantasai> Mitchell: there's an advocacy piece
00:50 <@fantasai> Mitchell: but I'm interested in building a product that actually protects pricvacy
00:50 <@fantasai> Asa: We can't convince the world that it matters, but we can build a product that  does it ...
00:50 <@fantasai> that has features that allows ppl to manage their data in a way that protects it
00:51 <@fantasai> ....
00:51 -!- silfreed [silfreed@moz-D5CF9ABA.westin.whistler.moz08] has left #moz-identity [Konversation terminated!]
00:52 <@fantasai> Meeting  usurped by Lilly