Mozgull

1. Freedom
On January 14th , 2010 there was a massive protest around the Parliament building in Sofia under the slogan “Bulgaria is not Big Brother, 2010 is not 1984”. The protest unites citizens, political parties and many organizations around their demand against the latest change in the data retention legislation.

Here I am:

2. Family
Daddy, could you walk faster, please. Mammy, please keep us on focus

3. The fucking weather

Last week, the weather surprise us all. -21 C is a temperature level for Scandinavia, not for Bulgaria:

I am thinking how to improve SUMO project and how to get more members into the community using this website:

The entry point

First of all, we MUST have our start page localized in all world languages. This is not a big deal, because I think, the start page should look like this:

Why? Because this is the user’s entry point to the Mozilla SUMO project.
How? No more than 100 strings for localization. Cool !

Meet and greet

Why not greet people on their own language when joining the SUMO website. If I am from Germany or other German speaking country or community (or even if I am using a German localization) or I am entering this website from Germany, based on my location (shared), why don’t I see the German website instead of English one :

Missing in action

So, we are having users on SUMO website, but we still don’t have the KB translated.

Let’s ask them for help and point them to “How to contribute” information:

Coming next: SUMO: Improving the user experience

If I were a SUMO Community Manager I would have 2 main directions to work on:

Internal – strengthen the existing community and external – to get more people to the community. I think SUMO community is one of the most dynamic ones in the World and there is a lot of passion inside.

Maybe is a cliche, but we are now in the age of participation, we must give the chance for all users to participate.

OUT

I think the external priorities should be something like:

• Teaching users what is the difference between website and a browser.
• Better communication with them – after asking a question, for example, they can be asked to help other people if their area of expertise is good enough.
• Get more members for the communities using existing platforms. We can communicate with people using their own language to educate them HOW and WHY to join the community. There are A LOT of people helping the users on Twitter, Facebook and different non-community forums – we must reach them and integrate them into community.
• Better integration between crash-stats and SUMO. People expect to see more information and help when is available about:crashes info.
• Why not greet people on their own language when joining the SUMO website.
• SUMO welcoming parties – once a month, new members will be invited to a “virtual” welcoming party.
• Integration between social network tools and TikiWiki.

and IN

If we are talking about internal community, we can find a way to reach every member of the community with:

• Put a member to be responsible for a task. For example : Please make a report for latest 100 non answered questions from SUMO forum.
• Line up areas of expertise and expect people to give feedback on that. For example if I belong to the group responsible for answering questions about UI, I can give better feedback on that issue, than other who is responsible about malware, for example.
• We have to improve our existing web tools and we need more feedback on that. I am ok with Spark, but it is not user friendly for non-technical community members.
• I know we have a lot of members, but the active members are not so many. So, we have to activate them with more personal and local tasks. We need something more stimulating than ‘Carma’.

How do I know such things?

I am dealing with communities since 2004 when I started organizing a Web technology conference. I t was important back then as it is now to find proper approach to reach the different community layers. The Combination between on and offline methods helps strengthening its integrity.

Currently I am managing several communities, one of them is based on our digital rights and freedoms and includes working with social network and services like FB, Twitter, Linkedin and so on, different types of people and politicians and organizing different actions such as protests, flashmobs and various topics discussions, concerning our digital rights.

I am participating in the Mozilla project since 2004. I started developing some search plugins and toolbars for Firefox, then I started to evangelize along with my open source and open standards activities in Bulgaria. I have participated in a number of meetings for Open source adoption in our government.

I am a member of an international group of organizations which work directly with the EP to stop software patents (again), the data retention directive and other violations of our digital and human rights. I ran for European Parliament in 2009.

Now I am working on building and stabilizing the Mozilla community in Bulgaria. I can communicate in English, Bulgarian, Romanian and Russian

1. Europe is different than the rest of the world. Here we have a huge diversity of nations and different ways of thinking mainly due to the political processes during the last 80 years, the different cultures and the fact that we are now trying to build a different kind of society through the European Union.

2. Drumbeat’s idea is leadership. We must understand that we are taking up this immense management and workload resource, because Mozilla’s Mission encompasses the free culture (CC), open source, open standards, open content, new technologies, sharing, future web development and many other things, which makes us not the next bunch of people with ideas how to develop web, but makes us the people who WILL develop the web from now on. On the other hand, Internet access and training must be promoted to all the Internet users.

3. First of all we have to have Web in order to have an open web. We must focus our efforts also in the struggle for neutrality of the World Wide Web, against data retention, against the violation of our private lives through DPI and other spying technologies and so on.

4. Another important task is to create the notion in everybody that WE are the community dealing with this. We must also create ourselves a new image, because 90% of the people believe that Mozilla is Firefox only, another 9% add Thunderbird in the equation, and only 1% actually know Mozilla’s Mission and that it is the most valuable thing in our project. That is why we must not fail and we should weigh our capacities accurately.

5. Drumbeat is not only about promoting Mozilla’s mission, but to create a new way for WEB development – the Open Web.

The project proposal – Privacy Beat

Why do our digital rights fall among our civil rights

Short Description

The project shall form a working group to create a common platform for sharing of information concerning our digital rights and personal space in the Internet.

The point is the users to be informed of their digital rights, of what is happening with them in different countries, how the users can protect them from violation and to have answers to different questions.

On the other hand, the website must create a community around itself, which community should share information, help developing the idea and participate together with different NGOs in the process of law-making and other legislative changes in different countries, so the Internet could stay in a way that could help the Open Web.

How will your idea make the web better?

he Internet is an open system, unfortunately many people are trying to turn it into a closed one these days and they are succeeding step by step.

That is why this project will be something like a global monitoring system for what is going on in the Internet, it will create projects and it will inform the users in order to bring back the Internet’s neutrality, where it had been lost, to protect the citizens form the different surveillance mechanisms through the Internet, where there are any, and to protect the freedom of speech.

This will be a small step to a better Internet from this point of view, as a basic component of the Open Web.

You can read more from here.

Drumbeat is a new project of Mozilla, aiming to gather a worldwide community around Mozilla Mission (behind the code) in order to come with new ideas and build open technologies for the web. Mozilla Drum-beaters are every day people, who go to places where other Mozilla users and potential users/interested parties gather, and tell them about the Mozilla mission as whole.

Goals
1. represent Mozilla Mission to the wider public.
2. help spread the word about Mozilla, Open Web and FOSS.
3. be a point of contact for local community members and channel the feedback to Mozilla.
4. think of creative ways for promoting Mozilla Mission in your region.

Wanna Join?
Select your country and fill the info from here.

Since my talk was not scheduled for the main track for some reasons I decide to propose a new lighting talk about OpenWeb and Communities:. a 7 min unconference session with a little bit of provocation

I realise that FOSDEM is not suitable for community (and marketing) topics, but I think a different view on Mozilla and our contribution in age or participation was very good idea to touch our hacker souls So you’ll never understand what are the common things between ZORBA and Mozilla ))

Maybe some of my readers knows, but FOSDEM is THE place where European Gnu/Linux hackers meet and will be sad if we can’t get their support on Mozilla related issues…. So, how can we do this?

Yes, we ALL support the Open Web, but do we really know what is the Open Web???

/some rights reserved under CC./

I start to read all comments about Firefox, Thunderbird and other Mozilla projects for my talk at FOSDEM. (or for any other Mozilla event, if it will be not approved.)

There are very valuable facts and ideas in there:

1. Why Mozilla sucks? at my blog.
2. Why Mozilla sucks? at LinkedIn
3. An unknown twitter account.

If you have your own version, please read my blog post and then post your comment.

On January 14^th , 2010 there will be a massive protest around the Parliament building in Sofia under the slogan “Bulgaria is not Big Brother, 2010 is not 1984”.

The protest will unite citizens, political parties and many organizations around their demand against the latest change in the data retention legislation.

The draft Law, which was passed on December 22^nd , 2009, contains provisions, allowing the Ministry of Interior and many other agencies to execute continuous and uncontrolled monitoring of the behaviour, movement and other information on any Bulgarian citizen, regardless if he is or is not guilty of any crime. This preconditions the reversing of the “innocent until proven guilty” concept, which is a founding concept of the Bulgarian Constitution as well as of a number of European documents for human rights protection.

Here are some points of the proposal:

1. The Ministry of Interior will have access through a direct interface to the data for the calls and the mobile devices positioning of every single citizen without any legal reason. Court order is required, but the term “interface” is also introduced and this gives the agencies direct and untraceable access to the general national database for every one of us, rendering useless the control, exercised by the Court and the Parliament.

2. Another odd requirement, which is introduced in spite of the Directive, is that traffic data may be retained for crimes with more than 2 years imprisonment, which is practically almost any crime. Even odder is the fact that the Law specifically says that these traffic data can be used in relation to computer crimes, provided for in the Penal Code, which soon will include the vague subject of computer piracy.
The other key issue, which we fight against, is the too big and wrongful extension of the Directive, requiring the insertion of similar matter in the Bulgarian legislation, thus giving a legal reason to the Ministry of Interior to enter the general data base any time it wishes.

Of course, there are many other problems, because the legislative framework on data retention itself violates our rights and it is no surprise that it is being abolished in many countries. We, in Bulgaria, will continue to work for this.

Here is an example interface – http://bogomil.info/dr (/Firefox /required).

“Electronic Frontier Bulgaria” is one of the organizations, which initiated the protest and which is leading the fight against Internet and mobile phones tapping since 2008.

We are a part of the core of the protest, which is to be held on January 14^th , 2010 at 11 a.m. in front of the Bulgarian Parliament. Our main and sole demand is a change in the draft Electronic Communications Law, ensuring the human rights of all users of Internet and telecommunication services in Bulgaria, including mobile phone talks.

Bogomil “Bogo” Shopov

EFB

bogomil@efb.bg

+ 359 897 615128 (mobile)

If you are going to visit FOSDEM 2010, maybe you can find these links useful:

Hotels

Cheap hotels near Central station – the journey from central station to the venue is about 20-30 min with 1 bus line. Take Bus 71, direction Delta, stop ULB

Cheap hotels near the venue

Maps

Venue @ Google Maps

Thinks to do

Thinks to do in Brussels from VT

Food

A city guide

Chi-Chi’s – Anspach
5, Boulevard Anspach
1000 Brussels
Belgium

Mexican restaurant’s Menu

Oh yes. I am addicted to …  nachos.

Finally my Wordpress template for a Mozilla community website is ready. It is based on Gandalf’s 0.1 theme, but is with a modern design and some things improved.

The screenshot is very close to the our existing community website’s template:

/click to enlarge/

Download

You can download archive from here (1.8 MB)
WP > 2.7, release date: 06.01.2010

Install

1. Untar all files to /wp-content/themes/ folder to your Wordpress installation. I hope you are using the latest version

2. Go to /wp-admin. Select Appearance and click on ” WP Mozilla Community Theme v2 0.2 ” screenshot

3. Go to Widget screen to pimp it or just visit your website.

4. Done

Support

Yes, Free support is available. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask here. I can help you build a community website using Wordpress. See an example here.

Upgrade and Feedback

There will be new version soon. I am working on some optimizations and your feedback can help me a lot.