This is the sixth in a series of notes posts about Mozilla Drumbeat. The idea here is to list out start refining criteria that ‘make a good Drumbeat’. While this list is short and simple (needs to be), it’s actually based on about a dozen conversations. Special thanks to Alex on this one.
Overall things to look for in set of Drumbeat activities:
- Important. Critical to the future of the internet and the digital society we’re building. Not a side issue.
- Resonant. Echoes ideas we’re already championing w/ technology (e.g. privacy or open web).
- Simple. Ideas framed in ways that people beyond geek world can understand. Think: knitting bloggers.
- Actionable. Anyone can participate. Each act of participation makes the web better somehow.
- Sexy, or painful. Either has huge wow factor, or ties to critical pain point people have w/ internet.
Additional things to look for in specific campaigns:
- Generative. Strong seed idea, but w/ much scope for people to hack, evolve and remix.
- Winnable. People can see what we’re striving for and believe it can be achieved.
Also, in designing a campaign, we need to be able to communicate:
- Why it matters?
- What change or outcome is needed?
- How you can help?
- The impact of your help?
With respect to Simple and pain points:
Simple: great start, but many, many people don’t understand a thing about the internet as evidenced by the infamous “internets” and “tubes” quotes. So even if ideas are in simple terms, the ideas will have to reach all types of folks and many of the people who have Mozilla on their radar, are typically not these kinds of simple people. Do you have someone walking about the streets asking random people about the internet and about Mozilla and browsers? I think this would be very helpful.
Pain points: this is also a great idea. It’s really difficult to get people, especially people who are not internet savvy, to articulate what their pain points are. They generally think it’s them or their fault. This is an interesting problem to solve and one that open participation can begin to address but different people have conversations at different levels so the question is how can you involve the people who are not used to having the kinds of conversations about the internet that you are looking for, that might be most helpful?