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new theme on my blog
Graphicsguru, Jamey Boje, sent me a theme redesign for my blog. It was a total surprise, but so well done I had to change the header in my style sheet. (errr…well…because of the WordPress multi-user software, I don’t have access to the style sheets and actually had to get Jeremy Orem to replace the header…thanks Jeremy.)
The redesigned header has the same color scheme, but Jamey created a nice abstract image that is a two-toned circle with an “S” cut out of it. It reminds me a lot of the circular nature of all the Mozilla logos, and might look most similarly to the Minimo logo.
Jamey has been a long-standing contributor to Mozilla and is one of the artists who does a lot of the nice cover art for places like SpreadFirefox and FirefoxFlicks. If you’ve seen some cool art that is very Mozilla, Jamey probably had some involvement. Because of that, we got him a copy of Adobe’s most recent release of Creative Suite a while back. Thanks, Jamey!
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I am digging Thunderbird & Lightning
Presently, I use Thunderbird (2.0.0.0) with the Lightning extension (0.5 RC1) for my calendar option, making a pretty clean version of a unified mail/calendar client. Yeah…both have a few bugs, but for me, it has been working really well. A lot of new features have gone into the calendar project, making Lightning a very convenient and extensible application that can sit inside Thunderbird. Here is a little bit of background on my experience:
I have done my best to file new bugs about the tricky things I was experiencing when using both Thunderbird and Lightning. In each case, the developers have responded very quickly with suggestions on how to fix my problems or questions about my experience to verify that it was a new bug. A lot of answers to questions can be found at places like the Thunderbird knowledge base on mozillaZine, so I always check there first. At times, I think I find a bug and do my best to file it.
Until yesterday, I was running Lightning 0.3.1. But, after filing this bug, ssitter suggested I upgrade to 0.5 RC1. What a blessing! The new version of Lightning is great. Nice work guys. I also use the Provider for Google Calendar (developed by Philipp Kewisch) extension that allows Lightning to read and write to the Google Calendar. I now read and write to three different Google Calendars (all the calendars are being used as scheduling tools for specific Mozilla-related projects), and to my work calendar, which is a web-based Zimba app. As a first test, I invited a new Mozilla colleague from China to a meeting with me. The invitation came from my Zimbra calendar through Lightning, inside the Thunderbird interface. Lo and behold, Li accepted and the meeting appeared on both the Lightning app and the web-based version of my Zimbra calendar. Google calendar is working the same way.
Awesomely (is that a word?), I have a unified and tight email/calendar client. Please check it out and email me if you are having trouble setting it up. I can at least tell you what I’ve done.
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Mozilla Community & Customer Service
If you’ve seen Asa’s blog post or read Sam Sidler’s post, then you are probably well up-to-speed about JT and Sam’s customer service initiatives. But, to recap, here is what Sam and JT are pushing forward:
Starting next Tuesday (May 8), we’ll be holding twice weekly meetings to discuss the future of customer support. These meetings are to discuss implementing some very specific things that are no-brainers in the realm of customer support.
- Tuesday, May 8, 2007 at 10am PDT – End-user knowledge base
- Thursday, May 10, 2007 at 2pm PDT – End-user forums
- Tuesday, May 15, 2007 at 10am PDT – One-to-one / multiuser chat
- Thursday, May 17, 2007 at 2pm PDT – How MoCo’s approaching this problem
- Tuesday, May 22, 2007 at 10am PDT – Recap and discussion of any other issues ideas
These meetings are open to anyone and everyone. If you or someone you know are currently providing any level of customer support, we want you there. Anyone who participates in any avenue of support is more than invited. That includes the mozillaZine forums and knowledge base, Mozilla’s bugzilla, the support newsgroups, any mailing lists, IRC, anyone working with Hendrix, anyone who works on the in-app help documentation, etc etc etc.
Because my friends and family know that I work for Mozilla, they assume I know everything about “The Internets“. I’ll occasionally install new features on friends’ versions of Firefox or help set preferences to make sure they are optimizing their experience. Can’t wait to learn more so I can become a viral customer service junkie…
Thanks Sam and JT. This should rock!
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Mozilla Lab Forum
Mozilla Labs launched a new forum site this past week. It’s a good place to log new ideas if you have them. This forum will be an excellent compliment to the resources we are providing through the community program. If you have a new idea about ways to support the community, I encourage you to send it my way. However, if there are ideas for new feature requests or project ideas, it might find a better home at Mozilla Labs. I’ll be following the forum closely and encourage everyone to participate. If you have an idea and don’t know if you should email me or post it on the Mozilla Labs Forum, do both. Congrats to Basil, Deb, Jeremy, Justin and Paul for launching getting it up and running. Check it out and please participate.
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Social Enterprise Conference
On Sunday, I traveled to Boston to serve as a judge for Harvard Business School’s Pitch for Change competition that took place at the social enterprise conference hosted by the students at HBS. As it turns out, the contest was pretty fun.
Our day started with 24 student teams giving our panel of judges 30 second elevator pitches about their high impact, entrepreneurial ideas. From these 24 ideas, we whittled the group down to 7 finalists who would give a longer 2 minute presentation. We came to our seven, but only after debating the 20+ great ideas.
Interestingly enough, in many cases we were forced to eliminate teams because we were left wondering, “What does that business do?” Thirty seconds is not a lot of time and I’m sure those who have given an impromptu elevator pitch have reflected on what “coulda” or “shoulda” been relayed. The best contestants were those who were able to state a social problem and then tell us what business idea they would create to solve that problem. In many ways, the contest was all about speaking skills.
At times, I felt like I was participating in a pop-reality program for social entrepreneurs. But when the smoke cleared, we awarded a win, place, and show to three great student ideas. Third place went to an interesting program that delivers humanitarian aid through the front line troops to people in Iraq and other war torn regions. Second place went to an innovative idea that hopes to prevent counterfeit pharmaceuticals from reaching the marketplace in the developing world. And, first place went to an idealistic car company designing light weight carbon based chassis, and then distributing them through a locally run supply chain, hoping to create more local jobs and domestic car production while reducing carbon emissions. Whoa.
After judging finished, I was able to poke around and sat in on a great discussion about “top-down” versus “bottom-up” approaches to starting social enterprises. There were some good nuggets that I took away from that session.
All in all, a great conference. Congrats go out to the students who organized the whole thing.
p.s. Weather in Boston was cold! Wind chill was negative 9 degrees Fahrenheit when I left. And, I forgot my winter coat in sunny California.
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