It’s November, which means it’s planning season. Last year at this time we developed a plan for our first year of Mozilla Webmaker. Our overarching goal for 2012 was:
Roll the best Drumbeat software and learning resources into a cohesive webmaker offering
As outlined in slides from our October board meeting, we met this goal — and we also learned a great deal about what we mean by Webmaker and how we need to evolve it as a product.
Building on this first year, our overarching ambition for 2013 is to:
Grow Mozilla Webmaker into a product that people love.
We’re in the early stages of developing a more specific set of goals and objectives for 2013. I outlined a first cut at these on last week’s Webmaker call:
External facing:
In 2013 we want Mozilla Webmaker to be:
1. A popular way to make and remix web content
2. That levels up your web skills as you make things
3. Powered by a global community of makers and mentors
Internal facing:
In order for this vision of Webmaker to succeed we need to:
4. Create a culture of excellence (process + outcomes)
5. Tee up solid long term funding and resource base
6. Establish a regular flow of new product ideas
We’ll be honing these over coming weeks. Expect posts with reflections and updates from myself and others on the Mozilla Webmaker team. In the meantime, I’d love to get reactions on this first cut at top level goals.
All very exciting. Though paradoxically, #5 and #6 will be (and historically have been) some of the most external-facing work we do.
#5 requires expressing our vision in compelling ways to funders and the public and getting them to buy in, vs. us taking on new obligations to stay sustainable.
#6 requires attracting real engineering and creative talent, understanding and respecting what makes them contribute to Mozilla (for these folks, it won’t likely be “I want to contribute to the Webmaker product.”)
IMO #5 and #6 are inextricably linked—it’s how we’ll get the very best people and ideas into product. It’s also why I love the big tent metaphor.