Drumbeat/overview

This is an expanded version of these widely circulated overview slides. It exists to describe and gather feedback on Drumbeat, and changes often.

1. Vision

The internet has become our global commons: a critical public resource that more than a billion people use to learn, innovate, trade, befriend and play. We envision a century ahead where this shared resource grows even richer and more vibrant. For this to happen, we must continue to build and operate an internet that is:

• Open. Built on technologies that anyone can study, use or improve without asking permission.
• Participatory, fueled by the ideas and energy of 100s of millions of people posting content everyday.
• Decentralized in both architecture and control, ensuring continued choice and diversity.
• Public much like a public square, with space not just for commerce but also for vibrant social and civic life.

Of course, this vision faces many challenges. Current examples: control over our digital identities and data is centralizing; and the growing mobile internet is far less open than the one on our desktop. At a more basic level, few people take the time to consider the internet as a public resource. They simply take it for granted, like air. Drumbeat is about gathering a critical mass of people address challenges like these.

2. Mission

Mozilla Drumbeat exists to explain, protect and improve the internet as a public resource. It's about starting a drumbeat around the world -- one where everyone can help to raise awareness, generate new ideas and get involved in making the internet better. Mozilla Foundation plays a critical leadership role: framing key internet issues and growing the community that forms the heart of Drumbeat. old versions of this mission statement

3. Goals

If Mozilla Drumbeat succeeds, the idea that internet as a public resource will be mainstream. More and more people will make choices about technology and online life that sustain -- or even improve -- this resource. With this aim in mind, the Drumbeat community should focus on three goals:

• Awareness: Widespread public understanding that the internet is a public resource.
  • result -> more informed web use, ready to take action and generate new ideas.
• Action: Large scale, decentralized volunteering and participation on big web issues.
  • result -> web becoming healthier, safer, more resilient.
• New ideas: Critical internet issues focused and clear, practical new solutions on the table.
  • result -> responding to internet challenges more quickly, generatively.

The best Drumbeat campaigns (projects? themes?) touch on all of these goals, starting with awareness and then inviting people to take action and generate new ideas.

4. Strategy

The Drumbeat strategy mixes online and on the ground activities. Web campaigns. Local meetings. A yearly event for thoughts leaders. The aim is to get people everywhere thinking and doing around the idea of the internet as a public resource.

Specific campaigns combine these activities with a simple idea or emotional connection to the internet. A passion for social media. A concern about online privacy. A longstanding commitment to a civic cause. These ideas provide a foundation for talking about the bigger picture of the internet as a public resource, and eventually for action and the generation of new ideas.

4.1 Overall Approach

At a functional level, Mozilla Drumbeat is built around three core elements plus a modest grants program. The elements are:

1. Online - Bongo: simple and helpful email newsletters as a way to make initial contact plus online campaigns for people who want to be more involved.
2. On the ground - Conga: local community events, demos and discussions where people learn about Drumbeat themes and prototype their new ideas.
3. Yearly event - Tympani: annual ideaswap / skillshare / festival, showcasing the best ideas and setting an agenda for the coming year.

At an awareness level, these activities are designed to connect as many people as possible to the Drumbeat community. At the action and idea generation levels, these activities connect people in a decentralized way to invent solutions, write content and create campaigns. In turn, they fuel Drumbeat and make the web better while at the same time building up new community leaders. full description of drumbeat approach

4.2 Proposed 2010 Themes

1. We make the web. Building a community of bloggers, photographers and other 'people who make the web'. Using data to visualize and explain the web they are making. (main pilot activity, 60 - 90% of effort)
2. Your web. Your data. Thought leadership and P2P consumer education about taking control of our identities and data in the cloud. (exploratory and opportunistic, 10 - 30% of effort)
3. Growing the civic web. Linking the public resource nature of the internet with new civic uses of the web like education, healthcare and human rights. (exploratory, up to 10% of effort)
4. The next 100 years of public media. Collaborating w/ orgs like BBC and PBS to help audiences and content creators shape the future of public media. (exploratory, up to 10% of effort)

• dynamic framework -> people generate ideas inside these
• this is where our resources go -> other ideas outside

5. Why should Mozilla do Drumbeat?

• Our mission statement says we're here to 'guard the open nature of the internet'. And someone needs to do it.
• Opportunity to establish Mozilla as a widely known social brand. Still an umbrella for things like Firefox and Drumbeat, but widely known.
• Growing a large, long term community of people to support Mozilla, including making donations.
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