Building on months of planning and discussion, we released a beta version of the Join Mozilla supporter’s program today. This will give us a chance to test the program and gather feedback in English and German before launching the full program in Q2 2011.
Join Mozilla is for enthusiastic Firefox users: people who want to support Mozilla’s mission in a simple way. The program will help these people keep up to date on what’s happening at Mozilla and learn about our big picture vision for the web. It also includes a $5 donation component: this will help Mozilla make more grants to innovative web projects like the ones emerging through Mozilla Drumbeat.
This beta release includes only the core elements of the program: a call to action page; a t-shirt that lets people show their support for Mozilla; a thank you page with the ability to share with your social network; and a follow-up email to new supporters. In addition to testing out these elements during the beta, the Join Mozilla team is also working on a monthly newsletter, a meet up series and additional engagement elements for the program. Spanish and Portuguese localizations are also in the works. This period of program testing and build out will last for 6-8 weeks.
During this beta period, we plan to gather feedback and increase community involvement in rolling out Join Mozilla. We need help refining the concept to work in different countries, creating web content that will be interesting to our new supporters and developing a ground game of meet ups and outreach. We’ve improved the Join Mozilla project wiki and set up a forum for community members who want to get involved. Thanks to the many of you who are already involved.
As I wrote a few weeks back, I’m personally committed to growing the Mozilla community and increasing the number and diversity of active contributors. We also need a way for millions of enthusiastic Firefox users to simply express their support for our work. While I expect it will go through many iterations, I am hopeful that Join Mozilla will provide this.
Hi Mark:
check the latest brain-storming collection for topics of the next Balkans meetup.
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Balkans/Events:2011/Sofia/Talks
If you check the wiki page history, you’ll note we were thinking along similar lines already befor your blog.
regards
smo
Hey Vito! Interesting session proposal “Think Globally, act locally”. Would be great if you could join the Join Mozilla list and talk more there!
Hi Alina!
“Think Globally, act locally” is not a proposal. It’s a mindset. My mindset.
As regards your proposal re “Join Mozilla” list I am cautious about these so-called “marketing” initiatives – by now I’ve had my share of running after all kinds of buggies & trains.
If I join, I will definitely do my best to avoid ending up with a yet another Town Hall Meeting experience.
Anyhow, I am easy to find. Contact me and we will talk. I have things to say and things to learn.
regards
smo
This is awesome Vito. We definitely want to do what we can to help with what looks like an already well thought out plan. As Alina said, the mailing list is a good place to talk about this stuff — but we’ll also reach our over the coming week.
This sounds very cool!
I’m just not sure about that t-shirt. Is the web “the world’s largest public resource”? What about the oceans/water, the air?
I’m also wondering about the shirt itself: 20,000 people die in the cotton fields each year because of the pesticides used. Cotton is also bad for the environment and uses a lot of water. And the working conditions for those who grow the cotton and sew the clothing are often very bad.
I wish you would say something about these issues on the site. Hemp and bamboo t-shirts are almost as cheap to make, and much, much better for the environment and people. There are also ecological and Fairtrade cotton. Why not use any of this? (I can’t know for sure that you don’, but I find it very likely since that’s the “default” and there’s no mention of what the t-shirt is made of on the site)
Mozilla stand for improving the world. Then we must care just as much about those that grow and manufacture our stuff as of anyone else!
I don’t mean to be a jerk. I hope you understand that I’m only concerned for the well being of my fellow humans, the world and Mozilla. 🙂
I guess the web is the world’s largest man-made public resource. 🙂
“20,000 people die in the cotton fields each year because of the pesticides used. Cotton is also bad for the environment and uses a lot of water.”
The situation is not as simple as you might think. That figure comes, as far as I can tell, from a WWF/IISD report in 1997. A later IISD report, available here:
http://www.iisd.org/tkn/pdf/pk_Banuri.pdf
(although I admit I have not read the entire thing) has the following additional points to make:
“Recent years have seen growing concern in industrialized countries about the environmental impact of cotton production and processing. The bona fides of such concerns have come under question from various southern governments and academics, given that their emergence coincided with the efforts (specifically the negotiation of the GATT Agreement on Textiles and Clothing) to dismantle the single most significant trade barrier imposed explicitly by the North against the South. Some writers have argued, and many governments believe, that the environment is simply another means by which the North will try to restrict southern imports and thus protect its uncompetitive textile
products. (CUTS 1997)”
Also, to put that 20,000 figure into context, it says:
“Cotton is the largest revenue earning non-food crop produced in the world. Its production and processing provide some or all of the cash income of over 250 million people worldwide, including almost 7 per cent of the available labor force in developing countries.”
Cotton production puts food on the table of a lot of poor people. And if I’ve done my maths right, and these stats are correct:
http://www.medicine.ox.ac.uk/bandolier/booth/Risk/sports.html
then if you are a cotton farmer, the chances of dying of pesticide poisoning in any given year are approximately equal to my chance of dying on the slopes if I take a single skiing holiday this year.
I don’t know the source of our shirts, but I am pretty happy to support the cotton industry in developing countries, because I think that the best way you can help less developed countries in the long term is to buy what they are selling.
(It should be obvious that this comment is not, of course, an official Mozilla response to your points!)
Thank you for your interesting response, Gervase!
If it’s true that the 20 000 number is exaggerated then that is very good news indeed.
“I don’t know the source of our shirts, but I am pretty happy to support the cotton industry in developing countries, because I think that the best way you can help less developed countries in the long term is to buy what they are selling.”
I agree with the last part of this sentence, but I’m a bit troubled by the first part. The “it creates jobs” argument is a horrible argument which can be used to defend anything. I can buy all kinds of useless junk, because it creates jobs. I should not worry about the working conditions for the workers that create the products I buy, because buying those products at least gives them jobs.
I’m sure you’re seeing where I’m going with this. That something creates jobs is good, but we must care about the quality of those jobs. If they get paid less than what they can support their families off of, if they get drugged, have to work extreme hours, are threatened with being sent back to the country they have fled from, are not allowed to go to the bathroom, etc, etc (all of which happens a lot in the clothing industry, take a look at the Clean Clothes Campaign: http://cleanclothes.org/), then we should not buy from those producers. We should pressure them to give a decent wage and conditions to their workers, and then we can buy from them.
No matter the environmental impact of conventional cotton, the fact remains that it is bad and that there are a lot better options out there: Hemp, bamboo, Fairtrade and ecological cotton. These options should be used. In addition one should do what one can to try to have buy the shirts from manufacturers that are decent as I described above (I’m sure Clean Clothes Campaign and others can help you find one next time).
Thanks again, and I hope you see why I still find this a very urgent issue, especially for organizations like Mozilla, which I have a huge amount of respect for!
PS: I have Joined Mozilla 🙂
Also: I received my Join Mozilla t-shirt yesterday. 🙂
So I’m ready to order my “Supporter of Mozilla” T-shirt at Join Mozilla page, right? I’ll do it as soon as you confirm. 🙂
@alina: nice talking to you, but my comments were addressed primarily at Mark.
regards
smo
I still don’t like the logo, though I think the campaign itself is cool, this strange “M” doesn’t fit anything else we do, so it doesn’t look to me like it would support our organization or community at all, but more likely something that just uses the name for something very different.
Still, as I said, the campaign itself is a very good idea, IMHO, so I hope it’s successful despite that strange logo.