“It’s about how people collaborate, how people meet each other…” When Jennie Rose Halperin joins theFutureBook Conference’s Changing Technology panel, she’ll be carrying a message from Mozilla that echoes that of Tumblr’s Rachel Fershleiser on #futurebook14’s Long-Term Role of Social Media panel: Think community.
“For us, the emphasis is on community and creativity,” Tumblr’s Fershleiser says. “We’re the place people come to celebrate their passions, and they create more fan content and keep the discussion going longer than on any other platform.”
“One of the things that we’re trying to do,” says Mozilla’s Halperin, pictured, “is think about how people think of not only advertising but of content from the Internet. The Open Standard is one way we’re trying to do that.”
The Open Standard (http://openstandard.mozilla.org) is Mozilla’s new online magazine, launched on 21st October with the kind of supplemental clarity that only a good wiki can provide — and exemplify. On the Mozilla Wiki for the OS, you read:
It’s time to help more people understand who we are, what we care about, and how our work impacts our online and offline lives for the better. One of the most visible ways we create positive impact in the world is with our beloved Firefox products, but we also need people to know about the value of open systems and challenge the thinking of the status quo. Our work, achieved in partnership with our global volunteer community, is what distinguishes Mozilla from other technology companies, and enables us to pursue our mission on multiple fronts.
Originally named Mozilla Voices, the initiative — renamed in a community-sourced effort, of course — is specifically not about Mozilla but about “our mission and support of open systems and a free and healthy Internet,” as a community post announces it.
And there may be one of the most important elements of community for a digital publishing industry to get: community is not necessarily about publishing or about a publisher’s output. The Mozilla ethos says the more open, the better.
“The Open Web is important to us,” Boston-based Halperin says. She’s a project manager and researcher on the Community Building team at Mozilla.
In its description from Wikipedia, an icon of Open Web practice, the Open Web movement “asserts a special role for public, cooperative, and standard World Wide Web communications; it opposes private, exclusive, proprietary Web solutions.”
And it’s at the very core of the mission of more than 10,500 “active Mozillans'” efforts and those of more than 40,000 active community members, in cooperation with the non-profit Mozilla corporation.
“It’s really our communities that make us different, that make us special, that drive our products forward,” Halperin says.
By Porter Anderson | @Porter_Anderson
The FutureBook: “Influenced by People”: Tumblr & Mozilla at The FutureBook Conference
Read the full post at: TheBookseller.com/futurebook
