As I noted in my last status update, Mozilla Drumbeat will continue to be a major priority for the foundation team in 2011. We plan to follow through on our three largest projects from year one, and also to launch three additional large projects.
At the February Mozilla Foundation board meeting, I led a discussion of Drumbeat plans and priorities for 2011. This included a fair bit of detail on the new Knight Mozilla journalism initiative as well as an overview of other major projects. I also provided a brief operational update. A slidecast (PDF) of this material is here:
As you’ll see in the slides, there is a great deal going on with Mozilla Drumbeat right now. If you don’t have it you watch the full 25+ minute slidecast, here is a summary of key points:
- The Knight Mozilla News Technology Partnership is the first major new Drumbeat project for 2011, a three year effort to put web innovators into news organizations.
This $2.5 million initiative has two main parts: 1) design challenges that bring in people and 2) fellowships for up to 15 challenge winners. - Other 2011 ideas we are the testing waters on: Batucada, Hackasaurus, citizen cyberscience, radio + hyperaudio experiments.
- Projects continuing from 2010 include Universal Subtitles, Web Made Movies and the School of Webcraft.
While these projects have had early victories, they all face challenges moving from prototype to product. This is a major focus across the board for 2011. - As we move into our second year for Drumbeat, we will be developing metrics that help us track progress in three areas: quality; participation; and adoption.
- Drumbeat ops update: big January news was Universal Subtitles and Web Made Movies inclusion in PBS Newshour’s State of the Union coverage. Upcoming events in March include Hackasaurus design jams in New York and Chicago, ButterCamp in New York and our first Drumbeat web + science hackfest in Beijing.
- Join Mozilla ops update: we still plan to launch a beta version of the project in late February, testing the idea / gathering feedback at CeBit in Hanover Germany in early March. Additional activities will take place around Firefox 4 launch.
If you’d like more detail but don’t have time to watch the whole slidecast, you can flip through this PDF version of the slides.
Great update. Our openwebjournal project just got started. Is this eligible for scholarships?
I am sorry about that short remark. I mean where do we find the eligiblity for the The Knight Mozilla News Technology Partnership fellowships, and how to apply for these? Maybe writing readable comments while commuting on the phone is not so handy…
Marco: no worries. The best place to start is with this series of blog postings:
http://nathanieljames.org/blog/category/mojo/
From that, you should contact Nathan James. He is running the program. Tell me if you need his email.
Hey Mark,
With Mojo, I can’t help but think of Adrian Holovaty, who created the Django framework and a computer science + Journalism guy who was combing the two back in 2006. I’m certain they have some journalism-computer science degree program(s) in the states as well. Hackasaurus reminds me of Scratch which came out of MIT as a programming language for children.
I don’t mean to say that the projects have been done before negatively, but that there might be opportunities for collaboration on these projects and that they could be substantial. Bringing those people into the fold, maybe reaching out and getting some of those individuals exposed to these projects, as well as Mozilla + Drumbeat’s specific goals could:
1. Create fruitful partnerships where some projects are delivered in close association with other groups
2. Give Drumbeat more heroes/patrons that represent the different verticals the projects touch
3. Bring more non-usual participants that those patrons lead into the fold.