2008 Summit Proposal

Session Title

Visualizing the Mozilla Project

Session Leaders

Mitchell Baker

Summary

Background Materials

Agenda

People have trouble understanding Mozilla. People focus on legal structures, and other measurements and frameworks that don't fit Mozilla well. It's hard to walk away with a crisp image that sticks with you.

I've got an image and a framework I think might help this; i've shown it to a small set of people and gotten good response. I'd like to (1) try out my current approach with anyone interested in this topic; and (2) see what other images/ models people are using to explain Mozilla.

Proposed format:

• see who else has a model they want to show / describe / test
• figure out timelines, depending on how many approaches there are
• brief run-through of the approaches. In my case, I'd like to do this not as a true presentation, but as how I approach this.
• discussion / critique / brainstorming
• explore generality of the approaches. i.e., is my current approach OK for me, but unworkable for everyone else? Is there an approach that many of us can use, embueing it with our own experiences and yet be using the same metaphors?

If you've got an approach you'd like to discuss, please add your name here.

Note that when I say "visualize" I mean conceptually; I'm not talking about visualizing data. I'd love to see that eventually -- imagine how much fun it would b to have data about the number of contributors or localizations ready to go, or spreadfirefox activities streaming into a visual model! But we'll want a conceptual framework to integrate this, and that's my current focus.