SUMO knowledge base to be live September 28!

Thanks to all the hard work of the SUMO community, the SUMO knowledge base will be going live to the public on Friday, September 28th!

We will initially roll-out the knowledge base with links from blog posts and one link from the current Firefox support page. We will be testing the stability and scalability of the site while getting valuable feedback on the support. After the initial testing and feedback phase, we will begin to roll out the site to a wider audience.

Thanks to everyone who has contributed thus far. It has been an amazing team effort! If you want to get involved, visit our "get involved" page.

FYI-- we will have a timeline public for the forums and the live chat by the end of next week.

Welcome David Tenser!

Please welcome David Tenser, our new SUMO Project Manager! We are all very excited to have David working on the SUMO project and back in the Mozilla family.

David is a longtime contributor to Mozilla and the Firefox and Thunderbird support sites,
authoring major parts of help content from the early days of the Foundation. Originally from Eskilstuna, Sweden, David has a BS and MS informatics and computer science. David was most recently Chief Software Engineer at Emsize AB in Sweden, where he led the development of supply chain software in the packaging industry. He recently participated in the Mozilla Memory bank project-- you should check out his conversation with them.

Updating the update page

As you likely saw when you upgraded to the most recent version of Firefox, we show you a landing page to tell you that you have updated to the latest and most secure version of Firefox. We have also traditionally used that page as a way to communicate to you (and all the other users), most often about add-ons. We think that page could use a little work....

Below you will find the screen shots of the new versions of the page. Please check them out and give us your feedback.

Our primary audience is people who have not tried add-ons before; either because they have never heard of them or they don't quite understand what and how useful they are. We hope to use the learnings from this effort to continue to improve how we communicate the "customization" benefit of Firefox across all of our properties.

We will be testing two versions of the update page. The first version is similar to our current update page, but with a design, copy and UI changes. Please note that with both versions of the page, we have included the "release notes" to tell people what changed when they updated Firefox as well as an easy way for them to go to their homepage if they are not interested in trying out add-ons.


















The goal of our second page (below) is to introduce the user to specific add-ons from the start. We think that even if these specific add-ons aren't appealing, the user will quickly "get" what an add-on is and will be interested in seeing more.
















This page is the "landing page" that users will click through to if they are interested in seeing more add-ons. This page will also have a link to the full add-ons site. We will be testing two different versions of this page: one that shows 6 add-ons to users and one that shows 10. For all pages that show add-ons, we will be rotating add-ons through and tracking to see which ones were downloaded the most often.

Please give us feedback on the forum home page mock-up

We have been having lots of back and forth about the design of the SUMO forum home page. After much discussion and feedback, we have developed this mock-up:


For a general reference for comparison, please check out the SUMO homepage: http://support-stage.mozilla.org

Goals of this page:
1. To ensure that the user has searched through the knowledge base.
2. To get the user to search through the forum to find an answer to their problem.
3. If they can't get their answer in 1 or 2, we want to make it easy for them to ask their question (we are currently missing a good explanation of how the forum works-- maybe that is a call-out box that we link to-- any ides?)
4. Make it easy for people to log-in and/or track their current questions

I would appreciate your thoughts and feedback here.

To get involved with the SUMO project, check out our contributor page.

Join us for our weekly SUMO project meetings

This will be a weekly, public call to discuss the progress of the SUMO project. Please join us!

Thursday from 2:00 pm - 2:45 pm pacific time

Phone call details:

• California: 650-903-0800 then extension 91
• Toronto: 416-848-3114 then extension 91
• Toll-free: 800-707-2533 then password 369

Then, enter your bridge number : 280

IRC: #SUMO

Enterprise Working Group Call Wednesday morning

From wiki.mozilla.org/Enterprise:

We’re planning our second call for Wednesday, August 8th at 10:00am Pacific, 1:00pm Eastern, 17:00 UTC. Here’s the meeting details:

• 650-903-0800 or 650-215-1282 x91 Conf# 280 (US/INTL)
• 1-800-707-2533 (pin 369) Conf# 280 (US)
• IRC - irc.mozilla.org - #ewg

The theme is "Wishlist." Please feel free to update the Wishlist page before the call.

We need your feedback on the Firefox support site alpha

Thanks to the tremendous work of the Firefox support community, the SUMO alpha is now live at http://support-stage.mozilla.org.

We need your help to kick the tires of the new site and to tell us whether or not you think the content will be helpful for the average Firefox user. To give feedback on a particular article, please do so in the comments section on the article's page. For all feedback related to the actual site (not articles), please post your comments at the SUMO newsgroup.

Thanks again everyone for all your help. We still have more articles to write, more articles to edit and more work to be done on the SUMO site, but now is an appropriate time to celebrate all the hard work and accomplishments thus far!

L10n of support.mozilla.com

This is a follow-up to my earlier post about localization of the Firefox support project on support.mozilla.com.

The first step in localization is launching the beta en-US version of SUMO. Once we have a few weeks of good user feedback and data, we can determine which support articles are the most useful and stable (there is even a metric for this!). The most useful/stable articles will be rank ordered for localization.

Why the useful/stable metric? We want to make sure that users in all locales have current and correct articles. Some locale support teams will be robust enough to manage all the necessary changes in existing and new content. Some locales, though, will have smaller teams who will need to do high leverage translation—so we want to make sure the articles they translate aren’t going to change the next day.

The SUMO knowledge base beta should be live in September. We are hoping to begin localization of SUMO no later than October for those locales who want to participate. To help make this process easier, there will be a staging area for localized content before the support.mozilla.com platform is launched in your locale. If you want to get involved, please contact me at jt at mozilla dot com.

What if I don’t just want to translate? We know that there are some support issues that are unique to particular locales. We also know that different locales have different ways of approaching technical support. Mozilla wants to ensure that all of our volunteers have the correct information so that they can figure out the best way to share that content with users in your locale.

I just got a support phone call for Firefox...

...and it reconfirmed to me why the work we are doing on Firefox support is very important.

All she needed help with was to import her bookmarks from IE, but she had no idea where to do it and then where to look for them (she may have actually imported them as a part of the install-- she didn't think so-- but that is beside the point). The point is that our work on SUMO will positively impact the daily lives of Firefox users. This was a woman who was told to use Firefox because it would make her online banking easier and better. Think of all the people like this who we will be able to help keep or even turn in to passionate users of Firefox.

The phone call also reaffirmed to me that we have a long way to go content wise on SUMO. We have are off to a great start, but there are still so many things that people need help with. That said, I still do think our strategy of getting the initial article list live and then using the learnings from how people actually use the SUMO site (what they search for, etc.) to determine what new content we create is the correct one. Using those learnings will also tell us how we can make all this great content easy to find--even when users don't know exactly what they are looking for (which is equally important).

So, thanks again to everyone for all your hard work. You can still get involved. Visit our SUMO contributor page to learn how.

Seeding Mozilla marketing in India and beyond

Mozilla in India...
Seth B., Manager of Mozilla's community giving program, and Chris Hofmann (chofmann), Director of Special Projects for Mozilla, went on a 2 week community building trip to India as a part of our larger objective of seeding Mozilla marketing around the world. Seth's blog has an incredible account of the trip (many great blog posts). I recommend that you check it out. A quick summary is that Seth and Chofmann both feel that the Mozilla community in India is incredibly vibrant and excited to help spread Firefox.

... and Beyond
As I mentioned earlier, Rishi, one of our interns, has been researching the state of the web and the state of Mozilla in Russia, Australia, Pakistan, Singapore, Turkey, Canada and Mexico. We will be publishing what we have learned within the next week. We look forward to your feedback on the information and possible next steps.

What's up in Brazil and Argentina? Lots!
I have heard from a few of our Brazil volunteers that they have begun organizing action teams around getting local computer makers (small businesses-- almost like mom and pop shops) to put Firefox on all the computers they build. Mozilla Argentina volunteers are testing a similar program at Internet Cafes/LAN Houses. We are all excited to hear how these efforts work and see if they can be replicated elsewhere.

1 week until SUMO knowledge base alpha-- we need your help!

If all goes to plan, the Firefox Support Working group will be pushing the support.mozilla.com knowledge base live for community review next Friday, August 3rd.

We still have some open articles, as well as plenty of claimed articles that need writing and editing. Check our our community contributor page to learn how you can help. It is going to take a full team effort to get the alpha live by the end of the week, but given the overwhelming response thus far, I think it is doable.

Forum design feedback needed
We are now in the process of designing the look and feel of the SUMO forums. If you have any feedback on what they should look like (remember, we have already chosen TikiWiki as the solution) or any examples of easy to use support forums out there, please contact me at jt at mozilla dot com.

Do you know any good chat solutions?
We also are looking for live chat solutions. If you know of any good easy to use chat solutions, please pass those along too!

First Enterprise Working Group call a success!

As I mentioned earlier, we now have an Enterprise Working Group that is exploring how we can make Firefox easier to use/deploy for large organizations (companies, schools, governments, universities).

Check out a quick recap of today's discussion. Thanks to everyone who participated.

The next call will focus on improvements/features in Firefox that would be helpful for enterprises. We are still looking for participants in the group, so definitely feel free to join. Once we have details for the next call, I will also post them here.

support.mozilla.com and community support sites

Since the Firefox Support community working group announced its PRD to create a knowledge base, forum and live chat at support.mozilla.com, many people have asked me how this will affect the community support sites around the globe. I will answer that in two parts: 1) Why we think the community driven support.mozilla.com is important 2) Community support sites are and will still be integral parts of the Mozilla community

For the long time that Mozilla has not addressed user support of Firefox, these community sites have done an incredible job providing user support on behalf of the Mozilla community. However, as the user base has grown beyond tech savvy users, the support needs for Firefox have changed. After an open planning process of a few months, the support working group has determined the best way to meet the needs of the average Firefox user is to create SUMO.

Firefox support, even on Mozilla.com, will always be community driven. We couldn’t and, just as important, wouldn’t have it any other way. We also need to increase participation beyond the current contributors to meet the expected demand. To get involved, please contact me at jt at mozilla dot com.

We fully expect that community support sites will continue to meet the needs of their users after the launch of SUMO. The larger the support community there is, the better things are for Mozilla users (Firefox, Thunderbird, SeaMonkey, Camino, etc). I suspect there will be lots we can all learn from each other.


What about L10n?
The SUMO project will first be rolled out for en-US (because we have volunteers to make it happen). Locales who want to participate in the beta of SUMO are definitely welcome. Please contact me at jt at mozilla dot com for more information. Until others are rolled out, we will link to the community support sites in those locales (similar to what we do now).

What a trip! Mozilla's last few days in Brazil cap off an amazing week

This is my last posting from Brazil. It has been an incredibly successful and worthwhile trip! We have traveled to 4 different cities in 8 days, collaborated with enthusiastic and talented students at 6 of the top universities, met with representatives from the largest portals and sites in Brazil (UOL.com, Globo.com and Buscape.com), spoke to more than 1000 people about the importance of Firefox in keeping the web free and open, been interviewed by 3 of the top news outlets in Brazil, treated many of our pt-br Firefox localization team to a pizza dinner and learned invaluable information about a very important country for Mozilla’s future.

We have met so many wonderful and dedicated (or soon to be dedicated) Mozilla community members. They are the reason why there are more than 3.5 million Brazilians using Firefox today and will be the reason that number continues to increase. At one of our community gatherings, one of our volunteers commented on how much he appreciated our live updates on this blog. He said that he really felt that we (Mozilla) are really trying to understand Brazil and to make the web better for the 30 million and growing Brazilians who use the web. Ultimately though, no one will know Brazil better than our Brazilian community leaders—we look forward to helping in your efforts to spread Firefox.

One of the most important things we learned during the past 8 days is that almost 70% of Brazilians access the internet using IE 6. And, many, if not most of them are using an unlicensed version of Windows (no one knew the exact number, but the general consensus is that the number is very high). With no Window’s license, these users don’t get updates to Windows or to IE 6. That means that the majority of Brazilian internet users are very venerable to the many nasty attacks out there on the web. The good news is that Firefox can help. Because Firefox has an awesome automatic updater that runs outside of the Window’s update system, Firefox users easily and quickly get the most up to date version of Firefox to keep them safe on the web. This problem was reiterated to us everywhere we went in Brazil-- many of our community members have volunteered to help explore ways to get this message out. If you have any suggestions, we would love to hear them.

A few highlights of the last 2 days:
We spoke to the engineering, marketing and product teams at UOL.com, Brazil’s largest portal and incredibly gracious hosts. We also met with some of the founders of Buscape.com, which is very similar to Shopping.com and is a leader in Brazil and a fast grower around Latin America. We also made presentations to students at Unicamp (University of Campinas) and the University of Sao Paulo, where we were asked everything from “how did you come up with the name Firefox” to “how to I get involved in other ways besides coding.”



The highlights of the past 2 days were definitely our Mozilla community gathering and our dinner with localization team. At the community gathering, we spent more than three hours brainstorming ways of spreading Firefox, trying to get their perspective of the state of the web in Brazil and then did a general question and answer session. The future of Mozilla Brazil was definitely sitting in that room! We also were fortunate enough (even though it was a 21 hour day) to be able to have dinner with many of our localizers for Firefox. I think the picture of the group shows how much fun it can be to be a key contributor to Firefox.

My favorite two non-Mozilla pictures and a general thought:
These are both from the small airport we flew in to on our way to Sao Carlos. One is a sign that shows the systems of the Dengue Virus (very nasty as you can see). This sign was right next to the security area and was unlike anything I had seen before. The other photo is the “luggage belt” where you pick up your luggage after your arrival. One side of the glass is where the airline employees unload the baggage and right on the other side of the glass is where we stand to pick it up (just a few feet away). All the locals liked to make jokes about it, so I thought I would pass it along to you.



















Finally—I just wanted to mention that the people here were incredibly hospitable, engaging, friendly and very helpful during our trip. To everyone who helped make that possible, especially long time Mozilla contributor Marcio Galli, I (and Asa) say thanks!

More love from Brazilian press

UOL.com, Brazil's largest portal, has a great article about Firefox 3. This interview also appeared on Brazilian TV.

Here is the article in English.

Also, check out the picture of Aas being interviewed:

Mozilla in Sao Carlos (in photos)

Another incredibly successful day in Brazil-- this time we were joined by longtime Mozilla developer and evangelist Marcio Galli. We spoke to packed crowds at the Federal University of Sao Carlos and the University of Sao Paulo in San Carlos, both some of the most competitive and elite schools in Brazil. We met many Firefox fans-- some of whom threw a Firefox 2 launch party by creating what was supposedly the world's largest hamburger (and then they ate it!). There was lots of great brainstorming around how to get organized in Brazil and what the first tasks/stunts/events should be.

We spend the next two days in Sao Paulo with completely packed schedules, so updates are likely to be a little less frequent. Over the course of the trip, we should speak to more than 1000 Mozilla enthusiasts explaining how to get involved spreading Firefox.





Check out all the photo's at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/asadotzler/

More on the state of the web in Brazil

I have had a chance to type up a few more notes—here are a few more things we have learned about the Brazilian market (all based on conversations we have had with people from universities, foundations and top internet companies):

The operating system market share on one of Brazil’s top websites is:
Windows 98- 45%
Windows XP- 40%
Vista- 6%
Linux- 4%
Mac- too expensive!

When people buy personal computers in Brazil, they buy it without an operating system and then go get pirated copies of Windows (generally older versions). Actually purchasing an upgrade to Windows is very expensive for people and all the people with pirated software don't get updated from Microsoft, so there are many security issues for users here (all the more reason to use Firefox!).

Top Dail-up ISP’s
Terra—which is backed by Telefonica (biggest telephone company in Brazil)
UOL--essentially Brazil’s AOL

Largest ADSL’s are run by telco’s
Telefonica—“Speedy”
Telemar—“Velox”
Brasil Telecom—“Turbo”
(all actually pretty equal in #’s, but largest of high speed internet connections come from ADSL)
Main cable broadband company-- Netvirtua

A quick reference for the state of internet connectivity in Brazil is the US a few years back (telco’s and major media companies desperately trying to get in on this whole “internet thing” with most people still on dial up).

Globo is the largest media company in Brazil. They own TV Globo, the largest TV station, radio stations, the biggest magazines, the biggest papers and the Globo.com internet properties (5th largest portal online). They also have a stake in netvitua (largest cable broad band company) and own tons and tons of content.

Brazilian computer company Positivo claims largest share of home pc market in Brazil, with Dell and HP leading strongly in business market.

If you have anything to add (or think something is wrong), please let me know. I am trying to give real-time info, but after the trip I will be summarizing the notes for our community/partners in Brazil to edit for accuracy and thoroughness.

Mozilla's Friday (and Saturday) in Rio

Friday recap:
We met with professors and graduate students at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, one of the top universities in Brazil, to learn more about the state of the internet here. While most of the professors were in computer science, we also had and a business and economics professor who studies the business case for open source. According to the professors, the computer science program at FURJ had the first website in Latin America, so this is diehard group.

We then spoke to a group of about 100 students who hung around for almost 3 hours for questions and answers, with many who stayed longer for pictures with us (and by us, I mean Asa). The focus of our presentation was about the past, present and future of Mozilla and how they could be a part of it, with a focus on spreading Firefox. All of the CS students have to complete a “senior project” of sorts and one of the top professors in the school volunteered to “supervise” any student project that deals with Firefox. They also were kind enough to run us quickly by the “world’s deepest pool,” which is used to measure the impact of waves and win on oil rigs, boats and supposedly Oral-B toothbrush commercials.


That evening, we hosted a gathering of students, bloggers, professors and computer professionals to begin brainstorming on how we can spread Firefox in Brazil. Lots of different ideas came up, but people kept coming back to an Orkut extension contest (will do more on the session when we get back). Another interesting question many people brought up was whether the fact that most people at home access the internet in Brazil through dial-up causes people to be less likely to download Firefox because it would be too slow. We didn’t have the answer, but it would be interesting to look if we see a strong correlation with broadband connectivity and Firefox adoption in other regions.

On Saturday, we met with and Asa was interviewed by the Brazil Journal, which is Rio’s oldest newspaper. The cameraman and reporter were huge Firefox fans. The article comes out on Monday online and in print.

Asa took some great photo’s of our meetings on Friday—check them out!

Overall, here is a quick overview of some of the things we have learned:
- There is a strong, passionate group of open source advocates who are excited to work on behalf of Mozilla
- Some 10 million people (roughly 35% of all of Brazil’s internet population) uses Orkut (the social networking site) in a month
- While Google is the most popular search engine (it is suggested that one of the main reasons is their simple home page loaded fastest on everyone’s slow dial-up—off course in addition to having great search), the MSN properties are quite popular (in fact, just slightly smaller than Google). Popular services include MSN Live Messenger, Hotmail and Live.com.
- The top portal and one of the top ISP's is UOL, (many compare them to our AOL). We meet with them in a few days, so will have more to say on them then.
- Website compatibility is an issue (years ago, we had did a lot of work to get the top banks and e-commerce sites to work with Firefox, but this is a reoccurring theme among people we talk to). Many, if not most, of the older web developers/IT managers for Brazilian did not have formal training and are self-taught—so standards aren’t necessarily something they are familiar with (I am pretty sure this isn't unique to Brazil, but this was something many thought was important to note).
- Soccer is beyond huge (this is something I “knew” coming in, but I had no idea how big it is here)…everyone wants a browser skin of their team (personas anyone?)

Once we get back, we will do a more thorough presentation and blog post detailing the trip, the takeaways and the follow-up needed. Of course, we would love to hear your thoughts, ideas and questions.

Mozilla in Brazil Day 1: Center for Technology and Society

Today we met with the management team from the Center for Technology and Society at the FGV School of Law in Rio de Janeiro to learn more about the state of the internet open source software world in Brazil... and learn we did!

Here a just a few things this group of young, talented and smart lawyers are up to:
The Director of the Center for Technology and Society, Renaldo Lemos, is also the Chair of Creative Commons Brazil, which was the 3rd CC chapter outside the US. They somehow managed to get 2,500 people to attend the launch event for Creative Commons in Brazil (beating the other launches by many zeros). In addition, Ronald is also the chair of iCommons.org.
A few of their projects:
Culturalivre.org
Open Business Project
Free and Open Source Software Legal Support
Access to Knowledge (a2k)
In addition to their normal research and teaching, they also have been contracted by the Brazilian government to draft the new SPAM laws. Very impressive group (and great hosts too)!

At Mozilla, we often struggle to relate our core goal (promoting a innovation and choice on the web) to something meaningful for daily users. This challenge isn’t unique to Mozilla. One of the main goals of CTS is to ensure that their research and work, which if focused on development, innovation and democracy, is accessible to the average person. In addition to their many blogs aimed at general consumers, they also developed a real world approach to explaining the impact of copyright owners pushing for “permanent” copyright to materials by having 20 different musicians record different tracks from a high profile Brazilian classical musician whose family is fighting to extend the copyright on his work indefinitely. If the copyright expires on January 1, for example, the 20 new tracks will be released on the 2nd and then on the 3rd, the CTS team will promote a contest to see who can do the best remix of the tracks, which could never have been done before in mass because of the copyright. Rather that just issuing a press release bemoaning the problem, their work to make copyright expiration palatable to a broader audience is down right impressive (forgive my butchering of the example).


We also learned quite a bit about the state of the internet in Brazil. The most interesting tidbit was that approximately 28% of the internet activity comes through “LAN houses,” which are nothing more than internet cafés for the lower and working class in some of Brazil’s worst neighborhoods or rural areas. These pay as you surf computer stations having sprung up all around Brazil as entrepreneurs saw the money that could be made by setting up places for the local kids to play online games and use Orkut (which is another story in and of itself). There will be plenty more posted on what we learned about the state of the internet in Brazil, but considering our red eye flight last night and full day of meetings, I am going to throw in the towel. Tomorrow we have a full day at the Federa University of Rio de Janeiro and a Mozilla community gathering at Devassa Flamengo in the evening.

Mozilla Brazil Trip Schedule

As I mentioned earlier, Asa and I will be heading to Brazil to help build and support marketing community. Below is the itinerary for our trip…

Thursday June 21, 2007
• Meeting Mr. Ronaldo Lemos, the Director of the Center for Technology and Society at the Fundação Getulio Vargas School of Law in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and of Creative Commons Brazil.

Friday June 22, 2007
• Meeting with Professor Geraldo Xexeo from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ)
• 2:00 p.m. – Mozilla Presentation at UFRJ
• 5:00 p.m. – Mozilla Community Gathering at Bennett Institute in Rio de Janeiro-- Open to all!

Travel to São Carlos

Monday June 25, 2007
• Dinner with Mozilla Community in São Carlos

Tuesday June 26, 2007
• 1:30 p.m. - Mozilla Community Development Day at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences and Computation at the University of São Paulo, Brazil
o 2:00 p.m. – Mozilla presentation
o 3:00 p.m. – Open forum
o 5:00 p.m. – Mixer

Wednesday June 27, 2007
• Meeting, presentation, and lunch with the UOL (www.uol.com)
• 5:00 p.m. – Mozilla Community gathering at the Golden Tulip Paulista Plaza Open to all!

Thursday June 28, 2007
• Morning meeting with BuscaPé
• Evening meeting with Unicamp.

If you have any questions or want to join us while we are there, please contact jt at mozilla dot com.