Tag Archives: popcorn

Making Webmaker: what’s next?

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Mozilla India community members made this by hand on Saturday using beautiful festival colors called "rangoli"

A lot has happened since we launched Webmaker. Since the initial launch announcement on May 22, we’ve seen:

More important than the numbers: we’re building global community. New people are showing up in our community calls. Photos and projects are coming in from around the world. We’re gathering valuable feedback on how to make the new Webmaker tools and projects better.

Who’s participating?

  • People from 68 different countries. People like this.
  • Learners with a broad range of web skills. Erin Knight’s early survey data suggests most users are coming in with more expertise than we originally anticipated — but still report learning new things.

  • Communities of mentors and instructors. As Jacob highlighted in yesterday’s community call, we’re seeing mentors and community instructors grab onto our tools and curriculum (like Popcorn and StoryCamp) and adapting them to their local programs and needs — a key goal for all our work.
  • Partners. Two of the most popular projects on webmaker.org have come from partners: the “Customize your Tumblr theme” project, for example — made possible by our partnership with Tumblr — and the Awesome Animal Builder from the London Zoo. And great partners like Black Girls Code and others are running events under the “Summer Code Party” banner all summer long, deepening relationships with Mozilla and teaching us.

Black Girls Code #MozParty in Oakland, June 30

  • High-profile speakers and mentors. Like Cory Doctorow and OK Go’s Damian Kulash.
  • Lots of new people introducing themselves on the Webmaker newsgroup. New community members have been sharing their background and experience there daily.

What’s new and improved?

Better Summer Code Party search. Users asked for improved ways to search for Summer Code Party events. This week we shipped them. They include:

Great stories and projects on the new Webmaker Tumblr. The Mozilla Webmaker tumblr has become one of the best ways to grok the overall story. And also shows some of the best examples of what people are making using Thimble, Popcorn, the X-Ray Goggles and other tools. Like using your first lines of HTML to tell someone important you love them:

Love hidden in the code. Thimble project from #MozParty

Coming soon:

  • A refresh of the Webmaker.org front page. To showcase the new global reach of the project, reflect our community more, and push participants to the right channels for conversation.
  • Easier ways to see and share what people are making. We need to make it easier for people to share and submit great work into the Webmaker Tumblr. And eventually through more automated user-generated galleries.
  • Incorporating user  and community feedback into a larger Webmaker.org re-design effort. Chris Appleton will share more on this in Tuesday’s community call. (Here’s a sneak peek.)

Click this image to watch this Summer Code Party Invasion video -- then make your own using Mozilla Popcorn.

What are people making?

Mozilla Webmaker projects and beyond. Some highlights:

  • Robot Invasion videos. The new Popcorn templates make it easy to produce a winning result fast. It feels like people are now intuitively “getting it” and seeing the creative potential for Popcorn in ways that were harder before. (See Jacob’s latest post on the sights and sounds of Popcorn’s StoryCamp, for example.)
  • Customzing Tumblr templates. As a gateway to learning HTML and CSS.
  • Making the web physical. MozParty Dundee, in Scotland, focused on hands-on hacking that blended the digital and the physical. From a physical blue bird that flaps its wings every time someone tweets “#MozParty,” to maneuvering Google Maps street view with a joystick. (This mix of physical and web hacking feels super rich — lots to think about for this year’s Mozilla Festival in November.)

Every time you tweet #MozParty, this bird flaps its wings

  • Making mobile apps. At MozParties in Zurich and Bucharest.

  • Tying in Mozilla’s larger mission and work. The Mozilla India team and ReMo members, for example, have been using the Summer Code Party as a tie-in and jumping off point for Firefox localization work and more.

What do the numbers tell us?

So far we’ve got:

  • Survey feedback on the new Mozilla Thimble projects. Erin Knight’s post tells the story and take-aways from the survey feedback we’re getting.
  • Social media and email growth. We continue to see good growth, plus the addition of Tumblr, with 2000+ followers in our first two weeks. Not bad.

Mozilla Webmaker social media channel growth

  • Early web metrics. Ross shared some early metrics from webmaker.org in yesterday’s community call. But we have lots of work to do on improving how we collect this data and make it actionable.

What’s next?

Roadmapping. Mark Surman has outlined some thinking, questions and next steps around the roadmap for Webmaker tools. In Tuesday’s community call, we’ll dive into this in more depth.

The Popcorn, Thimble and Webmaker.org teams have been doing roadmap work as well. More on that in the coming weeks.
DSCF8554

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Get excited and make things: beta test these new Mozilla Webmaker projects

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The best way to learn something is by making something. So as part of Mozilla’s campaign to help the world learn coding and webmaking this summer, we created these new Mozilla Webmaker projects. Their mission: help anyone (especially youth) make something amazing on the web fast.

Help test them out?

Can you take a few minutes to beta test the projects below? Are they easy to use? Helpful for learning? Fun? Flammable?

What’s the idea?

It’s all part of the Mozilla Summer Code Party. Blast off is June 23, with local events and teach-ins running around the world all summer long.

Mozilla will provide curriculum and fun starter projects like these. Tools anyone can use to make and learn together, just about anywhere. At local partner events, Mozilla spaces, libraries, or gathered around their own kitchen table.

Try ‘em out now. Kick the tires on these beta webmaker projects below and let us know what you think:

Make your own meme

Got what it takes to go viral and become internet famous? Prove it. This project lets you use your HTML and CSS swagger to create your own web page — featuring a meme to conquer all internet memes. Let your inner serious cat or Ryan Gosling “hey girl” shine.

–> G O <–

Hack a TV commercial

Remix cheesy TV commercials. Add your own voice, insert pop-ups, links and commentary to web video. Hack pop culture with the tasty new Mozilla Popcorn tool.

–> G O <–

Go back in time to make these ugly ’90s web pages not suck. Everyone has an embarrassing moment. For the web it was the 1990s, when websites were boxy, ugly and wore flannel. Wrangle your HTML and CSS style powers to change the content, colors and layout to drag these pages out of the grungy past.

–> G O <–

Hack your way through the web arcade

Say o hai to the “web arcade,” a collection of hackable mini-games that test your webmaking prowess. In this first mission, use HTML to fix a broken map of the arcade, unlocking new missions and exploring brave new webby worlds.

–> G O <–

Speak your mind

Got something to shout about? A rant, cause, passion project or block party you want the world to know about? Shout it from the rooftops by making your own web page in minutes, using this handy remixable template. Then share it via email, Twitter, Facebook or URL. Easy! </rant>

–> G O <–

Create your own “Inanimate Alice” episode

Create transmedia mayhem. Use the popular “Inanimate Alice” interactive novel and Hackasaurus to make your own storylines, characters and mashups, remixing the web as you go.

–> G O <–

Create your own awesome-looking “how-to” page. Use your newfound HTML, CSS and Popcorn wisdom to create the world’s greatest web page tutorial. What do you want to make today?

–> G O <–

Even more webmaker projects are on the way:

  • How to make your own animated GIF
  • How to tweak your Tumblr theme with CSS
  • Make your own avatar
  • + lots more interest-based projects from Hive, more advanced HTML and CSS projects, more from the NESTA event and more…

Sneak peek: new Mozilla Webpage Maker

It’s webmaking made ridiculously simple. The new Mozilla Webpage Maker tool will help you make your own fully real web page in about 8 seconds flat. All through a simple two-pane editor that makes the basics of HTML dead easy to learn. Test out the prototype here.

Get involved with Webmaker Projects

Get involved with Mozilla’s Summer Code Party

Webmaker Recipes 101: How to host your own kitchen table hack jam

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How can we make coding and webmaking a family affair?

As part of Mozilla’s big Summer Code Party (kicking off June 23), we’re inviting the world to host teach-ins and learning events. Everywhere. At their local library, at partner events, at Mozilla offices, and with small groups of family and friends around their own kitchen table.

Recipes for webmaking: testing the “Kitchen Table” event kit

the new "Kitchen Table event kit" prototype

This new Kitchen Table Event Kit is a draft “how to” for hosting your own kitchen table hack jam. We invited you to help prototype and test it in preparation for going big this summer, using Mozilla webmaking tools like Hackasaurus and Popcorn.

8-year-old Amelia liked remixing images and text to create her own web page

More than fifteen awesome groups of families and friends got together to test it out — from five-year-olds making web pages about snails with their dad, to adult friends getting together for a “mimosas and making” party.  Here’s what we learned together.

What was your favorite moment?

Here’s what our brave beta testers said was their favorite part of the experience:

  • “The SQUEAL when my friend first hacked Google.”
  • “When my mom replaced an image of a chocolate chip cookie on a webpage of a  kitchen table with an image of matzo so it was kosher for passover.”
  • “When (5 and 6-year old) Lucas and Kai saw themselves in a web page with their freshly captivated snail, they so began to get the idea of how info gets into the web.”
  • “Watching my boyfriend and my mom work on something together.”
  • “When  my friends started ignoring me completely so that they could make their  remixes more remixy. I was talking about something and they were like  ‘What?’”

What we learned:

  • People enjoyed the format. But sometimes found it awkward to get out of a traditional “teacher” role.
  • Keep the activity asks simple. But be familiar with the specific skills and interests of participants.
  • Grow a leadership community of people who’ve done the events and can support others.
  • Make it interest-based. Start with something people are already interested in. Or a web site they use all the time and are familiar with — then have them take it apart and remix it with the X-Ray Goggles.

What we’ll do to improve:

  • Continue to refine the Kitchen Table Event Kit. Polish it up for our May 15 announcement bout the campaign.
  • Create clear communication channels for hosts. Before, during, and after events.
  • Provide more simple learning projects and curriculum.  Offerings that help people find activities that fit their interests.
  • Smoother “share” functionality. Create a gallery of hacks and completed projects, so you can see what others made.

Going deeper: your analysis and feedback

There’s lots more great analysis and feedback from our testers, with take aways from:

Get involved

 


Mozilla and Hot Docs: geeks and filmmakers reinvent storytelling

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Hot Docs + Popcorn = awesome

This weekend, the Mozilla Toronto office will host six leading documentary  film-making teams. Their mission: pair up with web developers to push the envelope of documentary storytelling — using cutting-edge new open source software created by the global Mozilla community.

Run in conjunction with the prestigious Hot Docs documentary film festival, the teams will use Mozilla Popcorn to create prototypes that push the limits of storytelling online — pulling context, interactivity and other web elements right into the narrative. The result: a new form of “web-native” cinema that lives, breathes and changes just like the open web itself.

Hot Hacks projects: prototyping the future of story

The six “Hot Hacks” projects are:

 The Message: the (r)evolutionary power of climate change — a multi-platform (book + documentary + web + events) project by author Naomi Klein and director Avi Lewis.

Immigrant Nation: Using Facebook and other social media, Immigrant Nation will present a dynamic representation of immigration statistics from across the city.

Turcot: Turcot  looks at Montreal’s largest highway interchange, currently  scheduled  for a complete demolition and rebuild. The interactivity will give residents a voice, using geo-tagging, narrative slide shows, onionskin maps  and a chronological historical timeline.

Following Wise Men (working title): Building  a community  around astronomy through a searchable, community-sourced  science web  site. The project will chart astronomers and their discoveries in the  context of their  professors, mentors and students in an “astronomer’s  family tree.”

Looking at Los Sures: Using  an archival documentary (Los Sures by Diego Echeverria, 1984) about the  South Williamsburg neighborhood, the project brings together new short interactive projects from thirty different  artists over three  years. It will annotate and expand on the original film in new  ways, allowing viewers to move fluidly between the past and present.

The Last Hijack: For over 20 years Somalis have faced the horror of famine and war. The Last Hijack is a story about survival in this failed state, and about the rise of piracy and how it affects the people around it.

Part of The “Living Docs” Project

Hot Hacks is part of the Living Docs project, a series of events, projects and code to bring openness and innovation to documentary. Living Docs is a collaboration between Mozilla, ITVS, the Tribeca Film Institute, BAVC and the Center for Social Media at American University.

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