Project/2010 Goals/IRC/2010goals/2008-10-23
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< Project | 2010 Goals | IRC/2010goals
Part of the 2010 Goals project.
Log from channel irc://irc.mozilla.org/#2010goals starting 2008-10-23 11:30:04 -0700
Link to a time in the conversation by visiting a URL like https://wiki.mozilla.org/Project/2010_Goals/IRC/2010goals/2008-10-23#12:00
| ZakGreant | Make that, "Ahoy 2010 Goal seekers! Has anyone taken a look at: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Project/2010_Goals and friends?" | 11:47 |
| dria | looking now | 11:48 |
| ZakGreant | Thanks! | 11:52 |
| dria | I have a problem with saying that the 2010 Goals project is about answering that question. Answering that question would amount to compiling a list of tasks, which isn't really what we're doing here. | 11:54 |
| dria | i think what we're doing is more coming up with a more meta level of "things we want to accomplish" which will then inform the list of "things we're going to do to accomplish those goals" | 11:55 |
| dria | but that may be quibbling | 11:55 |
| ZakGreant | I'm happy to have things rephrased. Right now I'm trying to do the boring structure work so that we can get down to the business of discussing. :) | 11:57 |
| dria | yah for sure | 11:58 |
| dria | i think the structure and whatnot is ok. not a huge fan of using a wiki for discussion, but that's not really something I'll quibble about :) | 11:59 |
| dria | i'd like to see us write things to make them as engaging as possible to our community | 11:59 |
| ZakGreant | I don't think that we will do much discussion in the wiki. I think that we will mostly collect an organized version of the discussions in the wiki. | 12:00 |
| dria | goals discussions tend to get a bit of a "meh" reaction from people because they do tend to be abstract and sort of meta/boring | 12:00 |
| dria | we really need to communicate why this stuff is so important, and why they should care | 12:00 |
| ZakGreant | wonders why he said "get down to the business of discussing" as that isn't what he meant. :) | 12:00 |
| dria | :) | 12:00 |
| ZakGreant | nod | 12:00 |
| ZakGreant | Back when we were discussing the manifesto, we didn't get much feedback. I think that we have a similar challenge here - how do we make it so that people not only understand why it matters but that they also are willing to really think about the issue. | 12:02 |
| dria | there's also a chance that people know that there's a core of people they trust who do care and who will take care of it | 12:04 |
| ZakGreant | I think that the local coordination of discussions will help, as will being able to show people that we are working with their input. | 12:04 |
| dria | i allow myself the luxury of ignoring huge swathes of project activity because i trust that the folks involved will do what needs doing | 12:05 |
| dria | yeah the local "telephone tree" thing is a fantastic idea | 12:05 |
| ZakGreant | *nod* .. but that effect leads to some important things getting mostly ignored until there is some crisis. | 12:05 |
| DGMurdockIII | thunderbird need be consider in the 2010 goals and also you guys shold tro to thik about what what the internet will be like in about about a littel less that 2.5 years | 12:07 |
| ZakGreant | DGMurdockIII: Agreed. | 12:08 |
| DGMurdockIII | and i thnk firefox shold more strictly folloow the W3C stander and mozzila should even look to help shape it | 12:09 |
| ZakGreant | So. Where do we capture stuff like this? The wiki? | 12:09 |
| dria | are the Messaging guys engaged in this discussion yet? | 12:09 |
| ZakGreant | dria: I think that they aren't really engaged yet. | 12:09 |
| DGMurdockIII | what about the calander people | 12:10 |
| dria | Capturing discussions like these in the wiki would be good, eyah | 12:10 |
| dria | either attaching full logs or posting summaries | 12:11 |
| dria | summaries would be more immediately useful | 12:11 |
| ZakGreant | DGMurdockIII: IIRC, I've seen comments from them in Mitchell's blog. | 12:11 |
| ZakGreant | dria: +1 | 12:11 |
| DGMurdockIII | on the 2010 goals | 12:11 |
| dria | zak: I think we should get dmose or someone to be a coordinator for the Messaging-related community discussions | 12:12 |
| dria | to make absolute sure they do get involved | 12:12 |
| dria | also, i'm not a good person to have for the whole "mozilla developer" community. that's a huge community | 12:13 |
| dria | also, i'm going to be away for three weeks in the very near future | 12:13 |
| ZakGreant | dria: Agreed. dmose is teh awesome | 12:14 |
| ZakGreant | dria: No worries. I was just playing fast and loose with the wiki. Edit your entry as needed. :) | 12:14 |
| dria | yeah just have to come up with a way to break that community down into bite sized pieces and get reps for them | 12:14 |
| » dmose joined the chat room. | 12:15 | |
| dria | ahoy dmose | 12:15 |
| dmose | hiya | 12:15 |
| ZakGreant | goes looking for a knife and fork ;) | 12:15 |
| ZakGreant | hey dmose | 12:15 |
| dmose | i hear folks were wondering about messaging involvement | 12:15 |
| dmose | in the goals discussion | 12:15 |
| dria | just want to make sure your part of the world is represented | 12:16 |
| » wsmwk joined the chat room. | 12:16 | |
| dmose | i'm hoping to catch up on the latest bloging and blog something myself soon | 12:16 |
| ZakGreant | I've got a timeline of major posts/discussions started at https://wiki.mozilla.org/Project/2010_Goals/Timeline | 12:17 |
| ZakGreant | That can make it easier to follow the broad discussion. I need to write better summaries. | 12:17 |
| » emre joined the chat room. | 12:17 | |
| dmose | ZakGreant: ooh, helpful. thanks! | 12:17 |
| ZakGreant | dmose: No problem. :) | 12:18 |
| ZakGreant | dria: Any thought on how to tweak the question or its presentation? I've takin it right from one of Mitchell's posts, but that doesn't mean that it is right? | 12:20 |
| ZakGreant | https://wiki.mozilla.org/Project/2010_Goals#The_Question | 12:20 |
| dria | yeah i'll have to think about it a bit | 12:21 |
| ZakGreant | *nod* | 12:21 |
| dria | my worry is that we'll end up generating a list of essentially random ideas for tasks we should do, rather than coming up with the fundamental guiding principles that should be the foundation for the tasks we take on | 12:21 |
| dria | but communicating that is tricksy | 12:22 |
| ZakGreant | Perhaps drop some notes in the talk page? https://wiki.mozilla.org/Talk:Project/2010_Goals/The_Question What you said at the beginning of our conversation would be a good fit. | 12:23 |
| » DGMurdockIII left the chat room. | 12:23 | |
| dmose | dria: i dunno, the sentence you just used "my worry..." was pretty clear | 12:23 |
| dmose | dria: you could just use that | 12:23 |
| dmose | assuming, of course, that it really is important that everything be derived from a small set of principles | 12:24 |
| dmose | which i'm not sure is necessarily the case | 12:24 |
| dria | yeah | 12:25 |
| dria | so what i've seen happen in the past is that instead of creating a list of goals, we end up creating a list of tasks | 12:26 |
| dria | and i'm trying to figure out how to avoid that here | 12:26 |
| dmose | ok, that's fair | 12:26 |
| dria | and answering the question "what should we do with our products and product processes in the next two years?" is more likely to generate tasks than goals | 12:28 |
| » emre is now known as emre_yemekte. | 12:28 | |
| dmose | one could imagine inverting the process | 12:28 |
| dmose | which is to say, ask that tasks question | 12:28 |
| dmose | then look for patterns in the resulting task-set | 12:28 |
| ZakGreant | Which is one of the ways that Mitchell framed it (though she did qualify this with the little fragment at https://wiki.mozilla.org/Project/2010_Goals#Goals) | 12:28 |
| dria | then derive the goals from that | 12:28 |
| dria | yeah that could work | 12:28 |
| dria | it's such a fine line sometimes | 12:29 |
| dmose | it might well end up that there are a bunch of clear goals along with some set of "misc" tasks that should be on the list even though they don't taxonomically sort into one of the goal buckets | 12:29 |
| » DGMurdockIII joined the chat room. | 12:30 | |
| dria | possible, yeah | 12:30 |
| dria | i guess goals answer the "why are we doing these things?" and the tasks are the "how are we doing these things?" | 12:31 |
| dmose | yeah | 12:31 |
| dria | as written, the goals list doesn't really hit the why | 12:31 |
| dria | that might be a problem? | 12:32 |
| dria | http://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2008/09/11/proposed-2010-goals/ <-- the list i mean | 12:32 |
| dria | not sure if that's the most current version or not | 12:32 |
| ZakGreant | My next step with the wiki is to take the goals that have been, give each its own page and then tie in the feedback that people have had. This will let us more easily spot the patterns. | 12:33 |
| dmose | agreed that those goals don't answer why, not sure whether that's a problem or not | 12:33 |
| ZakGreant | I think that a lot of the why is tied up in the manifesto (or the next rev of the manifesto) | 12:33 |
| dria | yeah, maybe i'm thinking about this the wrong way | 12:33 |
| dria | is there a new rev of the manifesto? | 12:34 |
| ZakGreant | There should be. :) | 12:34 |
| dmose | i'm having a hard time imagining this mapping to any sort of "pure" process, whether top-down or bottom-up | 12:34 |
| ZakGreant | *nod* | 12:34 |
| dria | yeah true enough | 12:34 |
| dria | getting people talking about it in any fashion is the real challenge | 12:35 |
| dmose | because a bunch is based on our feelings of what the current problems are | 12:35 |
| dmose | but that by itself isn't really sufficient | 12:35 |
| dria | zak: what's wrong with the current version of the manifesto? | 12:35 |
| dria | just curious, i haven't looked at it in a long time | 12:35 |
| dmose | right, time to participate in discussion is definitely a very scare resource amount busy folks | 12:35 |
| ZakGreant | dria: bingo - getting people discussing is the key | 12:36 |
| dmose | s/amount/among/ | 12:36 |
| » Standard8 joined the chat room. | 12:37 | |
| ZakGreant | dria: I think that, while the maifesto is fine, giving it a light rev as part of this process gives us a chance to make it more relevant to people. It is supposed to be our lighthouse and instead it seems hardly referenced. | 12:37 |
| dria | i think it gets referenced pretty often | 12:38 |
| dria | i agree that perhaps it should be referenced as part of this process | 12:38 |
| dria | since it is the absolute foundation for the goals we're devising | 12:39 |
| dmose | totally | 12:40 |
| dmose | there needs to be feedback between this goals process and the manifesto | 12:40 |
| ZakGreant | +1 | 12:40 |
| dria | if needed | 12:40 |
| dria | i don't think revising the manifesto should be a goal unto itself, just something we'll do if the goals process ends up indicating is needed | 12:41 |
| ZakGreant | *nod* | 12:41 |
| dria | but yeah, we should revisit the manifesto critically whenever these sorts of discussions arise | 12:42 |
| dria | it should be part of the overall process | 12:42 |
| dria | it is a living document, after all | 12:42 |
| ZakGreant | +1 | 12:43 |
| dmose | agreed | 12:44 |
| ZakGreant | is taking a call | 12:44 |
| ZakGreant | .oO(That was fast) | 12:45 |
| dria | :) | 12:47 |
| ZakGreant | Any suggestions or comments on how the wiki pages are structured? | 12:48 |
| » wsmwk is now known as wsmwk_away. | 12:48 | |
| dria | zak: so most of the summarized discussions will appear on that first page? | 12:50 |
| dria | or will there be a sub page per goal? | 12:50 |
| dria | oh you say right there | 12:51 |
| ZakGreant | Sub-page per goal, with summaries ... | 12:51 |
| ZakGreant | :) | 12:51 |
| dria | i'd really like to have a paragraph (from mitchell or someone) about *why* we feel each of those things is important | 12:52 |
| ZakGreant | *nod* | 12:52 |
| dria | and I think reducing them each goal to a single word might not be the right approach | 12:53 |
| dria | "internet" doesn't carry the same meaning as "Deepen Mozilla’s role as a centerpiece of the Internet" | 12:53 |
| dria | on the other hand the "mobile" goal needs to be expanded | 12:53 |
| dria | because "mobile" doesn't really say a whole lot | 12:53 |
| dria | each should be an action. deepen, build, provide, ...etc | 12:54 |
| ZakGreant | I'm just using single words for broad categorization and for linking convenience. ...#mobile is easier than ...#become_the_leading_mobile_... | 12:54 |
| ZakGreant | Under each category, we'll have descriptive goal names | 12:55 |
| dria | sure | 12:55 |
| dria | i'm really more saying that the goals-as-written probably need to be revised | 12:55 |
| dria | they should be consistently structured and carry equal weight and meaning | 12:56 |
| ZakGreant | agreed | 12:56 |
| » dmose left the chat room. | 13:02 | |
| » Standard8 is now known as Standard8Away. | 13:08 | |
| » emre_yemekte is now known as emre. | 13:11 | |
| » emre left the chat room. | 13:27 | |
| » Standard8Away is now known as Standard8. | 13:41 | |
| DGMurdockIII | While openness and standards are good on itself as they drive innovation in areas where it makes the most impact for users, there's still something better to achieve: *easy* openness and standards. | 14:22 |
| DGMurdockIII | Whether an author decides to start up his IDE or log on to his favorite CMS, he shouldn't care whether his code is standards compliant or not. | 14:22 |
| DGMurdockIII | To do so Mozilla needs to: | 14:22 |
| DGMurdockIII | - reach (at least) open source CMS projects to help make them as web standards and open as possible | 14:22 |
| DGMurdockIII | deliver an integrated content creation tool that enables web developers and authors to produce open content, whether it is static or dynamic text content, video, audio, 2D/3D animation, forms, applications, etc. in a way that matches or exceeds competitive proprietary tools like Flash, Silverlight, QuickTime, Real, Windows Media Player, etc. | 14:23 |
| DGMurdockIII | In some cases, where there's already appropriate support for certain open standard back it as much as possible, making it the brain-dead option for content providers. A recent example of this is native support for Ogg Vorbis and Theora. PNG, SVG, MathML, are other examples. ODF is an example of a gap that could be closed. | 14:23 |
| DGMurdockIII | This doesn't necessarily mean that Mozilla should build all of these tools, but should ensure the options are there and help them become more viable whether they need infrastructure, usability/design expertise, community growing expertise, etc. | 14:23 |
| DGMurdockIII | I believe the time is now. Having five main browsers (IE, Opera, Safari, Firefox, Chrome) racing in so many areas for users preference is a good signal. But if most people understand it is not, then some kind of metric must be set to determine when will it be the appropriate time for Mozilla to get involved. | 14:24 |
| DGMurdockIII | I would include: "5. Facilitate open web content creation." | 14:24 |
| DGMurdockIII | We also need metrics for all set goals, but I guess that could be subject of a future post and discussion. | 14:25 |
