intothefuzz

Mike Beltzner caught this hilariously wrong caption during John Lilly’s recent interview with Fox Business News. It’s funny in so many ways:

The long list of “Amazing Mozilla Community Projects” just got a little longer: the latest entry comes from Vineel Reddy, a campus rep from India who put together a truly awesome video to help spread the word about the upcoming Firefox 3.5 release.

We’ve been working hard to build up our community launch team for 3.5, and energetic, talented people like Vineel are a great inspiration. The production quality of his video is so good it’s hard to believe that it was created on a shoestring budget one weekend by Vineel and his friends, but he even has the photos to prove it!

Here’s the video…just remember that Mozilla isn’t responsible for any speeding tickets you might incur after watching it.

Speaking of community marketing, it was fun to watch this video spread across the various social networking sites. It definitely struck a chord, because within 10 minutes of us posting it to Firefox’s Facebook page it had already gotten more than 600 likes. As I type this, the current tally is up to 2,677 likes and 278 comments (and counting)…pretty amazing.

(By the way, I’d love to claim that this video was the result of the workshop that Alix and I gave last week, but Vineel was way ahead of us!)

All month long the marketing team here at Mozilla has been hosting a series of workshops to get people mobilized for the upcoming Firefox 3.5 launch. Tomorrow, Alix Franquet and I will join the fun with a short presentation on how you can use videos to help spread the word.

Here’s a quick look at what we’ll be covering:
* How videos (especially community-created ones) help us spread Firefox
* The channels we use to share these videos
* Filming tips
* Technical tips
* Update on the My Firefox, My Words project
* Grand unveiling of a new community marketing campaign called “Fastest Firefox”. I think you’ll like this one.

The workshop is at Wednesday, May 20 at 9:00 am PDT/16:00 UTC. Here’s how to join us:
* Dial +1.650.903.0800, followed by 92# and then 7391#.
* Or, you can use our toll-free number: +1.800.707.2533, followed by 369# and then 7391#.
* If you’re outside the US, use Skype to call in with the toll-free number listed above.
* If you can’t join the call — but want to ask questions — you can join us in #marketing on IRC (irc.mozilla.org).
* You can also follow along (with sound and video) on the Air Mozilla marketing channel.

Don’t miss the action…hope to see you there!

Updates:
* The presentation slides are now online.
* Archived video of the workshop up on Air Mozilla.

Our new Location-Aware Browsing page now has an official mascot. Meet the Geolocator…he’ll help you find your way around, and respects your privacy too.

As always, thanks to the folks at the Royal Order and the Delicious Design League for applying their loopy genius to our products.

Just wanted to share a few links (mostly Mozilla design stuff) that have been populating my tabs lately:

* Alex Faaborg talks about refreshing the Firefox icon…like all his posts, it’s extremely thought-provoking. The comments are interesting, too.

* Looking back a bit, Mary Colvig reports that last year’s amazing Download Day campaign has won a People’s Voice Webby! Great news for a project that was a career highlight for all of us who were a part of it.

* Looking back a bit more, Asa Dotzler has resurrected the classic Hack artwork as a desktop wallpaper.

* David Boswell continues his series of updates on the mozilla.org redesign…so great to see how they’ve involved the community in every step of the process.

* A Kansas information architect named Sean Tevis has created a bit of an online stir this week with his innovative and generally awesome methods for using the web to create a grassroots movement. Check it out because a) his tactics remind me a lot of Mozilla, and include ideas we can learn from, b) there’s a browser reference right at the top of the page and c) cool cartoons!

Last week I posted the initial design direction for the Mozilla Creative Collective site for review. I was extremely pleased with Airbag’s work, but based on your feedback as well as our own internal thoughts, I asked them to make a few additional tweaks:
* fix the type treatment in the header (between the headline and the logo we had “Mozilla Creative Collective” written in two totally different fonts, which felt weird)
* make the top navigational elements more prominent, as they were getting a bit lost amidst all the designy coolness
* reduce reliance on graphic text to make it easier to localize someday

With that in mind, they sent us round two (posted below) today…check it out and let us know what you think. And, while you’re in a Creative Collective mood, don’t miss Tara’s post on building social capital through a system of badges, plus her design review of what those badges will look like. Good stuff!

(full-size image available on Flickr)

Join me in the time machine as we travel back to 1994 for this incredible Gateway PC commercial. Balancing out the uncomfortable vibe of the initial father-daughter conversation with the uplifting triumph of the walk into the light at the end takes real artistry.

Enjoy:

Last week Mozillians from around the world gathered in Mountain View for our annual all-hands meeting, during which time we wore name badges with the following personal info on the back: 1) what we do at Mozilla, 2) what we did before Mozilla, 3) favorite movie.

Seeing people’s answers was pretty interesting, so I started taking pictures and wound up with the compilation of badges below (it’s most, but not all, of Mozilla’s worldwide marketing team…apologies if I missed you). Any guesses as to who’s who?

The Mozilla community is an amazing thing, having proved many times over that it’s capable of doing anything from building a web browser to setting a world record. For those of us who work at Mozilla, a big portion of the job involves finding ways to engage the community as much as possible so we can harness its power (after all, that’s what enables us to compete successfully against the Goliaths of the internet business).

With that in mind, I’m particularly excited about today’s launch of the new Spread Firefox website. The old version of the site was created with the best of intentions, but it never really caught on the way we’d hoped…it lacked a clear call-to-action and never made getting involved as easy as we’d hoped. So, a redesign was in order.

The design of the new Spread Firefox is based around the theme of a community bulletin board, which is a nice metaphor, and it incorporates photos of actual community members in the header to give it an appropriately grassroots feel (be sure to hit refresh a few times to see the different options…you might recognize someone!). Even more importantly, it clearly lays out what’s going on in the world of Mozilla marketing and explains how you can help.

Big thanks to the Royal Order for designing the new site, and to Mary Colvig for organizing it all (not to mention the numerous others who worked tirelessly to make it happen). And extra big thanks to all the community marketing members who have devoted so much time and energy to helping push Firefox further along, even in the face of intense competition.