A very odd sensation today. My husband and I had gone to try to find decent quality office furniture (ergonomic desks, stand-up desk, that sort of thing). The store was closed, even though it was long before noon. For some reason I was drawn to the store next door, which looked a bit like a garden / home store. It had all sorts of stuff in the doorway so I wandered in while my husband sat outside, longing for lunch. As I stepped inside I heard the radio. After a minute the sounds became understandable to me — the radio was a talk show in Mandarin. I looked around, and sure enough, the proprietor was Chinese. The setting felt instantly familiar.

It’s funny, it’s been a very, very long time since I lived in Beijing. But it was such a formative experience that it has stuck with me. I understood the store completely — the odd combination of stuff, the kinds of things one was likely to find, the useful and oddball stuff. And while I’ve forgotten most of the Chinese I once knew, my ability to converse in Chinese is still light-years ahead of Spanish. Often, when I’m trying to say something in Spanish I’ll hear words coming out of my mouth and realize I’ve dropped some Chinese words in the middle of the sentence ….

MozCamp Europe 2012 is this weekend in Warsaw. It should be a packed weekend as the energy of so many people intent on building great things flows together. I’m also excited to see Warsaw as our venue, it reflects the very long and deep contributions the Polish community have made to Mozilla over the last 15 years. Sadly I need to leave early on Sunday because we’ve got 2 kids starting a new school in a new country and I want to be back for that. I suspect that means a *very* late night on Saturday 🙂

I’ve got a busy Saturday planned. Together with Tristan I’ll start things off with a big picture view of Mozilla. I’ll hold a session called “Evolution of the Mozilla Manifesto.” This will be partly about the Manifesto, and partly about “living the Manifesto.” The Manifesto is written down as words, but its true manifestation is how we act and what we build, and that’s what I plan to focus on. This is also way I love the Mozilla Community Quilt Presentations part of MozCamp so much — it shows the many local communities that come together to make Mozilla real.

There are also a couple of hours with space set aside for “Office Hours.” I’m hoping anyone, or groups, or local communities who have topics to discuss with wander by and we can work together. That way I’ll also get to meet a lot more people individually.

We’ll take the things that work best and bring them to upcoming MozCamps and other Mozilla events as well.

Overall, many comedic moments.  4 people in our group, only 1 of us has had *any* training in Spanish.  Two of us have spent time with Rosetta Stone, but in my case it was brief and stopped months ago when the pressure of moving and work and so one took over.    Barcelona folks have been wonderful to us, graceful, helpful, humorous.

Day 1, Monday August 27.  Arrive!

Day 2, Tuesday.  Keys to apartment acquired!  Air conditioner installed.  Much discussion with doorman, who fortunately is a very nice guy who isn’t too put out by a family that doesn’t understand his language.  Buy refrigerator, not able to find washer /dryer.   LOTS of sweeping and mopping.  Enjoy the snacks and useful items in the apartment thanks to Alina. Internet installation “completed” at apartment but not working.

Day 3, Wednesday.     Move to apartment from hotel.  Refrigerator delivered.  Acquire SIM for unlocked phone — not so easy in Spanish, with unknown systems and unhelpful sales person.  Affordable phone calls now possible!  Local phone number now available for delivery folks!  IKEA trip yields dishes, towels, glasses, silverware, a few chairs, etc.   Inflatable beds a la Amazon our only actual furniture.  Internet connection acquired, but flaky.  The splitter “installation” is something out of a comedy routine — jammed into a window frame, hanging from the wires, one wire sort of jammed in, mounting hardware sitting on the radiator.

Day 4, Thursday.    IKEA chairs arrive.  Find and visit various local stores.  Acquire drill / driver, tape measure, door stops, keys, food.  MovieStar installer returns, sheepishly upgrades splitter installation into something passable.  Internet acquired!    Landline phone acquired!

Day 5, Friday.  Buy clothes washer and dryer.    IKEA trip to identify mattresses to buy.  (IKEA too busy to buy).

Day 6, Saturday.  Washer and dryer delivered.  Clean clothes possible!  Work sessions to get comments back on upcoming Mozilla matters.  3 small plants acquired for window-boxes.

Day 7, Sunday.  Try to get transit passes for boys, but arrive after 2pm cut-off.  First time of pure relaxation on the terrace admiring the view.  Work session related to upcoming MozCamp.

Day 8, Monday.  IKES tables, chairs, desk purchased.  (3 hour shopping trip).  IKEA stuff delivered, desks under construction.    School computer for our son acquired.  Birthday cake made, low-key celebration for son’s birthday.

Day 9.  IDEA tables and chairs built.  We now actually have a table!   Bed acquired!  Good-buy inflatable mattress for us.  (Tomrrow for the boys.)  Local phone capability lost after I tried to put SIM in a different phone and realized I don’t seem to have the PIN.  First trip to the beach, though just for dinner.  First scheduled work teleconference.

Day 10 (tomorrow).  School Orientation — 2 14 year olds starting high school.  Should be interesting. First full day of school is Thursday, I leave Friday for MozCamp Europe. Many exciting new things on the horizon!

Now that the Opening Ceremony for the Olympics is over NBC (who has the rights for the US) will start showing the Opening Ceremony, complete with whatever “context” is so important that they couldn’t stream the event live.

Problem for me is, it feels over already.  I’ve lost interest, and I don’t plan to watch the Opening Ceremony.   Eventually I’ll probably watch the snippet with the Queen, but not the event.  This isn’t because of anger, or to get back at NBC.  It’s just too late for me.  I not interested in watching the re-run.

Wondering, does anyone else feel this way?

Please join me in welcoming Cathy Davidson to the Mozilla Foundation Board of Directors.  Cathy has been working with Mozilla for some time now, and we are very pleased that she has is  joining our Board.  Mozillians active in the education, web-literacy, or badges work may have seen Cathy and her Mozilla-related work already.  Mozillians active primarily in building Firefox and other general consumer products may have met her and can do so in the future through ongoing Town Hall, brown bag and related discussions.

I’ve been impressed by degree to which Cathy’s work intersects with Mozilla.  Her academic focus has been on the intersection of technology, collaboration, learning, and digital life.   In 2002 she co-founded HASTAC (Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory), an organization dedicated to rethinking the future of learning in the digital age.  We saw HASTAC in action during the first Mozilla Festival (“Learning, Freedom and the Web”) in Barcelona a couple of years ago.  I was struck by the innovative approach.

Here’s a bit more detail about Cathy’s involvement with Mozilla-related activities, and a bit more general info about Cathy.

Cathy joins Brendan Eich, Joi Ito, Bob Lisbonne, Brian Behlendorf and me on the Mozilla Foundation board.    We expect the board to grow a bit more as we seek to bring expertise in new areas and geographies.

Welcome, Cathy!

The Mozilla Foundation is welcoming a new board member. I’ll introduce
her in a moment. First I’ll describe the role of a board member, and
what we looked for. In June 2008 I wrote a description of the role of a
board member and I’ll start by quoting that piece:

The board of directors is generally responsible for the conduct and the
management of affairs of a company. More specifically, they have
fiduciary and ethical responsibility and accountability for what a
company does. There are many opinions about specifically what these
means as a couple of Wikipedia entries make clear. The main point for
this discussion is that a Board is really not like the operational
groups. To use more traditional terms, the Board is not like the
“management team.” The Board asserts authority in the areas of
governance and accountability; it provides assistance, guidance and
support in strategic decisions and tactical activities. There’s no one
better equipped to understand our world than the people building it
every day. We look to the Board to support and improve those efforts,
rather than try to micro-manage those efforts.

As in all roles related to Mozilla, we’re looking for individuals who
are fundamentally excited about the Mozilla mission and what makes us
different, and are highly attuned to [the organization’s] role as part
of a much larger community. For a board member we’re also looking for
someone who can execute the fiduciary and accountability
responsibilities required of a board, and is likely to work well with
the existing members of the board and the people with whom the board
works most closely.

For the Mozilla Foundation, we’re also looking for people who are
energized by Mozilla’s deep technical and consumer product focus, and
who are eager to expand Mozilla’s impact into additional areas.
Operational experience with nonprofit organizations and communicating
our mission are very helpful. Expertise in one or more of the areas
where Mozilla operates programs (education, journalism, “story-telling,”
Internet life, are also a big plus). The Mozilla Foundation board also selects the Board of Directors of its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation.

All Mozilla directors are volunteers. There is no compensation for being
a board member. This is true of many non-profits but a difference from
board membership in many private and public companies.

Thunderbird provides an open-source, cross-platform email alternative for those of us who still use stand-alone email clients (and I am one).  It’s trust-worthy, it’s under your control, and it’s built to reflect the Mozilla mission. Once again we’ve been asking the question:  is Thunderbird a likely source of innovation and of leadership in today’s Internet life?  Or is Thunderbird already pretty much what its users want and mostly needs some on-going maintenance?

Much of Mozilla’s leadership — including that of the Thunderbird team — has come to the conclusion that on-going stability is the most important thing, and that continued innovation in Thunderbird is not a priority for Mozilla’s product efforts. (For more information about the path to this conclusion, see the “Background Information” section below.) As a result, the Thunderbird team has developed a plan that provides both stability for Thunderbird’s current state and allows the Thunderbird community to innovate if it chooses.

In this plan, Mozilla will provide security updates through an Extended Support Release process. We will also maintain mechanisms for the Thunderbird community to organize for ongoing development. Here are additional details about this plan. If you are a Thunderbird user and are interested in more details, please follow the discussion at the two URLs above or in the Thunderbird online channels. If you are a Thunderbird developer, join the discussion in the Thunderbird development forums.

Thunderbird is an important product for many people — I am one of them.  If you’re one of us and want to get involved in building Thunderbird, now is the time. For Thunderbird users, the Extended Support Release process will provide security maintenance updates.

Background Information

We’ve asked the question about Thunderbird and ongoing innovation a number of times.  We’ve tried for years to build Thunderbird as a highly innovative offering, where it plays a role in moving modern Internet messaging to a more open, innovative space, and where there is a growing, more active contributor base.  To date, we haven’t achieved this.  The exception to this statement is the Mozilla localization communities, which contributes immense effort into localizing Thunderbird into many languages.  However, the dedicated efforts of these groups have not been supported by an active contributor base in other areas.    This puts great stress on a number of our localization communities.

The Thunderbird team has successfully updated the product and has built infrastructure for innovation in Thunderbird.  It has ideas and projects under way.  It tries to develop and welcome and nurture new contributors.   Over the years we’ve tried a variety of things to encourage community development and innovation in the Thunderbird world.  In the early days of the Foundation in 2003 the same team was developing Firefox and Thunderbird; then we created Mozilla Messaging for a focused development; and today the Thunderbird team is back in the main Mozilla product organization.

Most Thunderbird users seem happy with the basic email feature set.  In parallel, we have seen the rising popularity of Web-based forms of communications representing email alternatives to a desktop solution.  Given this, focusing on stability for Thunderbird and driving innovation through other offerings seems a natural choice.

Bassel / joi / CC BY

On March 15, 2012, Bassel Khartabil was detained in a wave of arrests in the Mazzeh district of Damascus. Since then, his family has received no official explanation for his detention or information regarding his whereabouts. However, his family has recently learned from previous detainees at the security branch of Kafer Sousa, Damascus, that Bassel is being held at this location.

Bassel Khartabil, a Palestinian-born Syrian, 31, is a respected computer engineer specializing in open source software development, the type of contributions the Internet is built upon. He launched his career ten years ago in Syria, working as a technical director for a number of local companies on cultural projects like restoring Palmyra and Forward Syria Magazine.

Since his arrest, Bassel’s valuable volunteer work, both in Syria and around the world, has been stopped. His absence has been painful for the communities that depend on him. In addition, his family, and his fiancée whom he was due to marry this past April, have had their lives put on hold.

Bassel Khartabil has been unjustly detained for nearly four months without trial or any legal charges being brought against him. — freebassel.org

Statement of Support to Bassel, his family and friends.

Mozilla supports efforts to obtain the release of Bassel Khartabil (also known as Bassel Safadi), a valuable contributor to and leader in the technology community. Bassel’s expertise and focus across all aspects of his work has been in support of the development of publicly available, free, open source computer software code and technology. Through his efforts, the quality and availability of freely available and open technology is improved and technology is advanced.

Please help us #FREEBASSEL by signing the support letter at freebassel.org.

The Ada Initiative was founded early in 2011 when Val Aurora and Mary Gardiner decided to take the plunge, quit their jobs and found an organization dedicated to supporting women in open technology and culture. I had met Val a few months earlier and was very excited by their plans.  When asked, I was very pleased to join the Advisory Board.  It’s rare that I join advisory boards but in this case I was happy to do so.

Just over a year later  TAI will be holding its second major event AdaCamp in Washington DC shortly, has been very active in bringing an anti-harassment mentality to open technology and culture gatherings, and has provided consulting assistance to a number of organizations.  In the past few days TAI has been approved as a tax-exempt organization in the United States, an important marker in the start-up phase.  The visibility of TAI is growing, and the Advisory Board has grown to 19 people representing a broad range of open technology and culture expertise.   One of the additions is Lukas Blakk, also of Mozilla.    In addition, Caroline Simard recently joined The Ada Initiative’s Board of Directors.  I’m  quite familiar with Caroline’s work at the Anita Borg Institute and at Stanford.  She brings a great deal of expertise in both the research about women in the workplace and in the practice aspects of putting that research into practice.

TAI is growing in scope and in capabilities.   Given that the initial launch period has passed successfully, I’ll be stepping down from the Board of Advisors.  I continue to support TAI and its activities.  With Lukas on the Advisory Board we will continue to have a powerful connection between TAI and Mozilla, and Lukas will have a good sense of when I can provide some particular type of support.   It’s important to make room for new people.  I can continue to contribute effectively in other roles, so I feel it’s time for me  free up a space on the Advisory Board for someone  new to step up, in line with TAI’s approach to volunteer service.

I look forward to seeing new faces at TAI, at the Advisory Board, and in open technology and culture in general.

Mozilla is an increasingly global community.  This is important to the success of our mission. If we hope to have a world of openness and opportunity for all we should be building centers of gravity in many different locales.  Silicon Valley in California is still the center of a big chunk of the Internet industry, but Mozilla’s commitment to the Internet as a global public resource means we in particular focus on building leaders in many other places.

With this in mind my family and I have decided to get ourselves out of California for a bit.    We’re planning to move to Barcelona next September for a year.  Barcelona is not only in the heart of Europe, it’s much closer to the middle east and Africa, and it’s no further from the east coast of Latin America than California.  (Although getting to Asia may be a longer trip.)  I expect to be able to spend much more time with many more local Mozilla communities.

This is a change of geography, not of commitment to Mozilla.  I expect to spend more time meeting Mozillians and more time focusing on project  dynamics.  I want to strengthen the ability for local leaders to become regional and global leaders in Mozilla.

I also expect to spend more time representing Mozilla to governments, policy-makers and other organizations interested in Mozilla and the Internet. By being located in Europe, we will be able to give more support to the critical issues being discussed in that region.  I will also stay involved in our product efforts, as these are so key to have we achieve our mission.    Perhaps I’ll find the time to do some of the writing that would be so helpful.

I’m not (yet???) a Spanish-speaker, so I will undoubtedly spend a bunch of time off-balance and trying to figure out how basic things work.

September will be here soon.   We’re excited!