How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world. Anne Frank
Today marks the last day of Mozilla Service Week. We hope you’ve had an amazing time this past week, getting out in your communities and helping organizations and individuals better use the Web. You don’t have to miss out on Mozilla Service Week — there’s still plenty to do!
- On your lunch hour or after work host a Web help desk at a local cafe, at your company or at school. All you need is a laptop, a sign and wireless wireless!
- Conduct an Internet Health Audit for a few friends or colleagues. We’ve made the audit even easier, just visit our Health Check page and you’ll know if you need to update your browser.
- Find a service opportunity on Idealist.org or on Betterplace.org (if you’re in Germany) and start helping a non-profit when you have the time. You can also scroll through some of the stories and projects posted on the Mozilla Service Week website.
If you need some inspiration check out how other community members have heeded the call:
- Nipon Haque of India has set up a website for the The Uttar Banga Anath Ashram orphanage. The founder Uma Mallick scrapes by to care for, feed and educate 28 girls. Anjan Kumar Das, one of their supporters, felt the need for a website to raise funds and awareness for this cause. Great work!
- Joe McLaughlin has helped bring the Millvale Library (near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) to life by refurbishing computers and getting the library online. Nice job!
- Abhinav Kishhore of India has taken the Web help desk idea online, creating a help request form. He’s volunteering to follow up and help you with your specific tech needs! Creative take on the Web help desk.
Have a great last day of Mozilla Service Week and get ready to celebrate OneWebDay on September 22nd!
Yale Students for Free Culture help spread the word about the Open Web for Mozilla Service Week
We’ve just got three days left of Mozilla Service Week. It’s not too late to help! Let’s take this weekend to get out and show people how to use the Web. It’s easy — all you need is a sign, your laptop and a venue with wireless and you’re an instant Web help desk!
This week isn’t just about helping people better use the Web, but about celebrating as well. That’s why we’ve paired up with OneWebDay to wrap up Mozilla Service Week. OneWebDay is like Earth Day for the Internet. It’s a chance to celebrate the awesomeness of the Web, and make it better.
Here’s how you can celebrate your hardwork this week and the Web in general:
Have fun meeting and connecting with the other people that care about the Web. And, as a gentle reminder, please share your stories and hours on Mozilla Service Week!
We’re kicking off Mozilla Service Week today with a bang: we’re close to 10,000 volunteer hours, over 3,500 volunteer opportunities and the site is now available in 10 languages, including recently added Portuguese, Romanian and Catalan. The Friends of Mozilla Service Week have also done an outstanding job raising awareness about our initiative, and we’re thrilled to announce that All for Good and Google have also signed on as friends.
There is literally an opportunity for everyone — whether you are a coder, writer, designer, social media maven, network guru or just plain love the Web. So let’s roll up our sleeves and help organizations and people all over the world experience the joy of using the Web! If you still need a service opportunity, we’ve got one from you:
- Choose from a list of over 3,500 service opportunities on our partner sites (Idealist & betterplace.org). There is a plethora of opportunities, including helping The Nature Conservancy of Chicago, IL with its photo archive, developing a LinkedIn group for Wardrobe for Opportunity in Oakland, CA, helping CARE, Germany’s largest NPO, develop a facebook app to send virtual CARE packages, and keeping Mexico’s Puente a la Salud Comunitaria’s website up-to-date. Our partner OneWebDay also has a variety of service events taking place on and around Sept. 22nd, including a number of events in San Francisco.
- Join a challenge! We’re looking to get a 100 people to conduct an “Internet Health Check” and host a Web help desk, and at least 50 people to host a social media seminar!
- Do it your way! Find an organization that needs help or create your own event. Long-time Mozilla community Ken Saunders reached out to Tutors for All and is volunteering to redesign their website, while Yale’s Free Culture Club is hosting an educational event on Free and Open Source Software.
Remember to register, pledge and report your hours, and help us keep track of all the Mozilla Service Week goodness by tagging posts on delicious and photos on flickr with “mozservice09″. For added inspiration join our very first twitter chat today at 9 a.m. PDT – 10:30 a.m. PDT.
Have fun and make a difference this week!
Kick off Mozilla Service Week by joining in the MozService09 Twitter chat!
Mozilla is hosting a Twitter chat on Monday, September 14, at 9am Pacific (that’s noon Eastern time, 5pm London time, 9:30pm in India) and will go for about an hour and a half.
Joining the chat will be Mark Surman, Chelsea Novak, Mary Colvig and Jane Finette of Mozilla and Nathaniel James of OneWebDay. In addition, many of our Friends and Partners will take part.
Here’s how to participate:
- Log on to Twitter from 9 a.m. PDT – 10:30 PDT on Sept. 14th.
- Search for the hashtag #MozService09 using a real-time Twitter search site (such as TweetChat, Twitterfall, or WTH.
- Join in! Ask (or answer) a question, and mark it with #MozService09 so that your tweet will be part of the conversation.
- Rock a Twibbon to show your support.
Here are the topics we’ll be covering (all times below are Pacific):
- 9:00am – 9:30am: How can the Internet enrich the lives of people and communities?
- 9:30am – 10:00am: What is Mozilla Service Week and OneWebDay? How can one get involved?
- 10:00am – 10:30am: What are you doing or have you done to enrich the lives of people and communities using technology? How are you getting involved with Mozilla Service Week and OneWebDay?
We look forward to celebrating the start of Mozilla Service Week with you! See you on Twitter.
One of the great “side effects” of Mozilla Service Week is the number of organizations that share our belief in the importance of the Web who have stepped forward to participate in Mozilla Service Week and help individuals and organizations. Here is a sampling:
CiviCRM, an open source and free constituent relationship management solution, has donated 100 hours to help organizations with CiviCRM. They’ll help organizations with both short term support (phone conference consultation, CiviCRM installation, etc) and then three selected organizations with CiviCRM customization installations. Find out how to take advantage of CiviCRM’s services
here.
Creative Commons which focuses on increasing and sharing the creativity (cultural, educational, and scientific content) in “the commons” — the body of work that is available to the public for free and legal sharing, use, repurposing, and remixing, is hosting a series of online office hours next week.
Join if you’re interested in learning how to use CC, publish your CC work and more.
Mahiti Infotech is a social enterprise based in Bangalore, India. Mahiti works with organizations, including non-profits, to help them deploy Free and Open Source Software. Mahiti has donated 200 hours to Mozilla Service Week and is offering to help any non-profit in India migrate to FOSS, including email and operating systems, free of charge! Sign up
here.
Thanks all for joining us in Mozilla Service Week. I challenge other software companies and organizations to step up and offer up your services next week as well!
As mentioned earlier, Mozilla Service Week has partnered with OneWebDay to celebrate the Web and wrap up our week of service. Learn more about OneWebDay from Chelsea Novak‘s blog post below:
OneWebDay is a chance to reflect on how amazing the Web is and to think about how we can move it forward, making it awesome for everyone. It’s held annually on September 22, landing it on a Tuesday this year.
The web has a profound effect on how we live and work. As a OneWebDay partner, Mozilla and Mozilla Service Week want you take action, volunteer your time and help keep the Web awesome. Mozilla Service Week was created with the goal of helping not-for-profit organizations in need. OneWebDay is a great opportunity to extend those good deeds to anyone who could use a hand experiencing a better web. Everyone can help, the only requirement is to simply love the web.
So do you want to be counted amongst the millions of people who love the web and find their lives enriched by the way the web allows you to share, communicate, work or play? The ways you can contribute are only limited by your imagination, but we have a few suggestions to help you out if you’re pressed for time:
- Donate to OneWebDay. OneWebDay is organized by one, full-time, staff member and an army of volunteers. With your support, OneWebDay activities can be expanded to include more international locales and improved with better resources.
- Take action and perform an Internet Health Check. One of the ways Mozilla is supporting OneWebDay is by suggesting activities that are easy to do and make the Web better. Perform an Internet Health Check by updating less technically-savvy users to a modern browser. At the same time, update plugins like Flash, Java and Quicktime and help others keep their computers and the Internet healthy.
- Organize or attend a OneWebDay Event in your town! There will be OneWebDay parties, rallies and service activities taking place all over the world. If you don’t see one happening near you, organize your own. Have a look at what we’re planning here in Toronto if you need further inspiration (a party, a screening and a drop off for older computers for people in need).
- Donate your Twitter or Facebook status on September 22 and follow @owd on Twitter. It’s easy to do and can have more impact than you know.
Some other great ideas have cropped up in the comments of Mark’s OneWebDay blog post as well as some fun ways to show your OneWebDay love around your school or office.
Start getting ready. OneWebDay is less than three weeks away!
We’re now just 11 days from the start of Mozilla Service Week and momentum continues to build! The community has stepped up to pledge over 7,300 hours of service and our localization community just rolled out the Korean, Polish and Shqip versions of mozillaservice.org. We also now have volunteer opportunities posted in 79 countries. Great work everyone!
While showing people how to better use the Web is fun, throwing in a challenge or a little competition makes it even more fun! We’ve set up “service challenges” or dares on PledgeBank to inspire more participation:
Join one of our challenges and remember to pledge your hours on the Mozilla Service Week site!
We’re getting close to Mozilla Service Week — it’s just 18 days away! We’ve had over 4,300 hours pledged and over 2,200 volunteer opportunities posted. We’re in the process of rolling out action templates for Service Week and OneWebDay for those that would like to create their own opportunities or need a little more flexibility They’re sets of actions and resources that you can use to help non-profits, organizations and individuals improve their experience online and allow them to better leverage the Web. Check them out:
- Internet Health Check: Online privacy and security are major concerns for everyone. The Internet Health Check provides four easy steps to update a computer’s browser and plug-ins. You can perform Internet Health Checks for an organization or friends and family.
- Digital Marketing: The Digital Marketing Template was created to help Service Week volunteers get organizations set up with a preliminary social media marketing framework (see Chelsea Novak’s blog for more details). Social Media tools can greatly help an NPO connect with its community, donors and the general public – for free!
We’re hoping these templates make it easier for you to act! If you have any ideas on new ones or would like create some, please comment here. A few ideas to keep in mind if you’d like to use these templates or others:
- Take a moment to pledge your hours.
- Share your plans or stories on Mozilla Service Week’s site — it will help provide inspiration for others.
- Challenge your friends to do this as well using PledgeBank (i.e. I will perform 10 Internet Health Checks if 20 of my friends do so as well).
And, remember to have fun!
As you know, we launched the Mozilla Creative Collective today! To kick things off we’re hosting a mini design challenge around Mozilla Service Week. We’re hoping your creativity and artistic skills can help inspire action and ultimately better the Web experience for people and organizations around the world.
Here are some ideas:
- Craft a flyer, poster or banner (the offline kind!) to get the word out.
- Design new site badges, Twitter backgrounds or blog themes.
- Create a new Persona for Mozilla Service Week. Check out the current one.
- Dream up a new t-shirt design for the community store.
- Create an avatar for Facebook or other social networks.
As inspiration check out The Royal Order’s blog post about the design direction of the Mozilla Service Week site. In a nutshell:
- The Mozilla Service Week site aims to be inspirational and make participants feel part of a bigger movement that has the ability to affect change and better the Web for people all the world.
- The site strives to reflect the organic, participatory and people-driven nature of the Mozilla project.
- We drew from the humanistic style of 1930′s WPA murals which evoked people working together and helping each other for the sake of the greater good.
You’re encouraged to use existing Mozilla Service Week elements (such as the logo) to create your own unique interpretation of the “take action” theme. In other words, your designs can look entirely different from the other Service Week materials…it’s up to you. As
inspiration, check out:
Please submit your designs to the Mozilla Creative Collective tagged with “mozservice09″ by September 14th. We’ll be sending t-shirts to our favorites!
Lastly, you can make a difference by helping an organization with their design needs as part of Mozilla Service Week. There are opportunities for both Web design and graphic design. Social Actions for instance can use some help with a new Twitter background and more!
Let’s use our creativity to make a difference this Mozilla Service Week!
Mozilla Service Week is coming up in just one month – September 14 to 21, 2009! The driving force behind service week is our strong belief that everyone should know how to use the Internet, have easy access to it, and have a great experience when they’re online. You can have a hand in helping organizations and people all over the world experience the joy of using the Web too!
Here’s how to help:
- Choose from a list of service opportunities: Search our partner sites (Idealist & betterplace.org) for a volunteer opportunity near you or anywhere around the world! Our site is now available in Spanish, Italian, French and German as well!
- Take part in “Earth Day for the Web”: We’ve partnered with OneWebDay on September 22nd, which aims to celebrate and preserve the Web as an important commons accessible to everyone. This year’s theme is “Digital Inclusion” and there will be local service events that you can join!
- Create your own: Reach out to a local school, organization or people near you to find out what sort of technology help they need. Here are some examples:
- William Reynolds of the University of Virginia is going to teach his student council how to use social media to better communicate with students.
- Tim Hogan and The Royal Order design firm are helping the Tutor/Mentor Connection in Chicago rearchitect and redesign their current site.
- William D. of the UK is creating a guide on how the Internet can benefit people of different age groups, different career paths and different levels of technical knowledge.
- Follow our lead: If you need an idea of how to help we’re providing a series of simple activities that can help make the Web better. First up is an “Internet Health Check” with easy steps on how to keep people safe on the Web. We’ll roll out more in the coming weeks!
Mozilla Service Week wouldn’t be possible without the incredible community and our wonderful partners who are supporting the program. Idealist.org and betterplace.org have stepped up to help organizations list service needs and help volunteers find them. Major names in non-profit technology, service and social entrepreneurship spaces have joined on as as “Friends” of the program to help promote Mozilla Service Week to the various communities that they serve which include schools, NPOs, NGOs and more. “Friends” of the project include:
We hope you’ll join us in Mozilla Service Week and make a difference by helping people and organizations use something you love – the Web! If you’re an organization in need of help, learn more here. For more details on how to volunteer visit here or join our online workshop tomorrow, August 19th at 9 a.m. PDT. And, remember to register, pledge your hours and share your stories on mozillasevice.org!
