As we pass the midway mark of 2010, we’re starting to see early results from our bootstrap Drumbeat projects. Universal Subtitles and Web Made Movies presented demos at Whistler. And Mozilla / P2PU School of Webcraft has 12+ courses scheduled for September. We also have a clear (and exciting) plan for the first Drumbeat Festival — a 300+ person event on ‘learning, freedom and the web‘ happening in Barcelona this November. Reflecting back on the last few months, it feels like we’ve turned a corner in terms of understanding and excitement around Drumbeat.

My July Mozilla Foundation status update (sorry it’s late!) provides a details on all of this, with a special focus on where each of the bootstrap projects are headed. It also includes some reflections from Whistler. Here it is:

There is alot of detail in this slidecast (17 minutes). For people who just want the highlights:

• Mozilla Summit in Whistler provided a first chance to *show* Drumbeat to Mozillians via our main projects.
• Core message: Drumbeat is innovation on the open web, powered by everybody. It brings new kinds of people to innovate *with us*. Many people got this.
• Across Mozilla, there is a strong desire to scale our movement. Drumbeat can help by expanding the kind of people who participate.
• All three major Drumbeat projects showed early outputs at Whistler: a Universal Subtitles Alpha; a Webmade Movies demo’d popcorn.js; and School of Webcraft announced fall courses.
• These projects also shared roadmaps at Whistler. Based on these roadmaps, Mozilla Foundation has awarded its first major Drumbeat grants (total = $US200k).
• We’re also opening a $1000/month grant program for the most promising emerging Drumbeat projects. This will build our pipeline of projects for next year.
• The ‘learning, freedom and the web’ theme for the 2010 Drumbeat Festival have been locked down. It will take place in early November in Barcelona.
• There will be a strong focus on how the web powers informal learning — P2PU, hackerspaces, libraries, YouTube tutorials, neighborhood tech centres.

The slidecast above offers slightly shorter version of info presented at our most recent board meeting. I’ll continue to provide these updates every two months, following the board meeting schedule. Comments welcomed here on my blog or by email.