Foundation/Program/Net Effects
Overview
Mozilla, the global community behind the Firefox web browser, has a goal that we need your help with. We want you to help make openness, participation and distributed decision-making common experiences in Internet life.
To do this, millions of people around the world must understand, embrace and share these values. You, me, our families, our neighbor down the street, our political representatives – millions of us from every walk of life in every wired country can help to protect the Net and make it better.
Net Effects is an experiment working towards this goal. It is a program coordinated by the Mozilla Foundation that asks people to share multiple short video statements of how the Net has changed their life. Each statement should be a simple and personal answer to the question, "What is one way that the Internet has changed my life?"
Along with the videos, we'll ask people to share a little bit of information about themselves and to give their permission to let others use the videos. We want to make it so that creatives, academics and others around the world can use these videos and the background information to create stories, build case studies, illustrate presentations, create art, promote the Net and much more.
We are working with a small group of people (who speak some 20+ languages between them) to test the idea more completely before we make a general call for participation. If you want to be a part of this testing group, please write to zak@mozillafoundation.org.
Finally, a few days ago, I made test videos to explore some of the ideas. I'm hoping that others (perhaps even myself) will record much better videos in the future. :) If you want to see the low-quality rough videos, visit http://flickr.com/photos/zak/sets/72157612984690925
Getting Started
All you need is access to a webcam (or a video camera) and a way to put your videos on the Net.
To get started, follow these simple steps:
- Watch some of the early videos at http://flickr.com/groups/mozillanetfx
- Brainstorm your own answers to the question of, "What is one way that the Internet has changed my life?" Your answers should be:
- personal - true statements about how the Net changed you and your life
- short - one or two sentences taking between 3 and 12 seconds of video total
- simple - focus on one idea or change per video. Statements like, "I learned to program and got a great job" should be split into two statements of, "I learned to program" and "I got a great job"
- native - in any language you are fluent in
- Choose the best answers.
- Make a few test recordings to get warmed up. If you don't have a video recording setup in place, try using one of the online video recording tools mentioned below. They allow you to record video using your webcam and a web page.
- Record near a sunlit window - your videos will look better (and so will you.)
- Spend a moment before each recording to think about what the statement really means. For example, if your statement is, "I can call my mum any time to say that I love her" then think about how happy this makes you, how happy it makes her and let this show in your video. If your statement is, "I waste 30 minutes of my life each day dealing with spam." then share your feelings about this as well.
- Include a written version of your statement
- Try recording 5 or 6 (or as many as you like) videos.
- Upload your videos and let zak@mozillafoundation.org know about them
Recording Software
- Cross Platform/Web: 12 Seconds and YouTube offer browser-based Flash video recording.
- Linux: Gnome Cheese
- Mac OS X: Apple Photobooth (Leopard only)
- Windows: Researching options
Video Distribution Sites
- 12 Seconds - New service. Allows video downloads. Has Flash-based web video recorder app.
- Flickr - Supports CC licensing tags.
- Vimeo - Allows video downloads.
- YouTube- Has Flash-based web video recorder app.
