 think it's really important for us who are fans of the open internet to think about what language what structures what ways of talking about why we care about the internet we need to use so that we're not just talking to one another in holding hands and singing kumbaya right I think it was almost 20 years ago 1997 that a bunch of nerds got into a room and and created this crazy thing this open-source browser called Firefox which is was a signal event I think in the in the history of the web as more and more people come online that event in 1997 means less and less to the 15-year-old kid and be Niel de Mar or the 42-year-old farmer coming on coming on the internet for the first time in Mozambique and the challenge we've put forth for the pan for the next group that's going to be talking is is how do we do that how do we take these values and approaches and frame of the open web that we all care and value so much how do we transfer that to to the three billion people on the planet who will be coming on the web over the next couple of years so I am going to hand it off to this three this esteemed group of folks who have all actually as I think about it they've all been well I'm sort of night news night Foundation family members in different ways Seamus Kraft the executive founding executive director of the OpenGov foundation Mark Sermon the executive director of Mozilla Foundation Elise Hu technology and culture reporter for NPR all have been great partners and advisors to us at night Foundation so I'm excited to hear what they come up with at least I'll hand it over to you because you're in charge well thanks everybody for joining us post lunch we want to make this a conversation and not a panel so that all of you all can get involved and to sort of frame the conversation and as John set this up really well this is kind of the heart of the economy going forward this issue is also newsy this summer and and it's the theme of this conference it's why we're meeting so it's really exciting that we get to talk about this and to sort of frame his thoughts on this going forward Mark has prepared a few short slides to get us in the right mindset and so that we can watch parts of a movie so we're going to start with Mark and then post mark we'll talk a little bit about Sheamus's background and how we got here so mark over to you hi guys hello Jesus Christ the internet server is a quiet so do we have my slides up awesome so I'm gonna talk about the open internet a little bit but first I need to air a little bit of dirty laundry this is the band Mark sermon grade 11 yearbook picture and you know I put this up there I live in a very small town in northern Ontario but 10,000 people mill town and I put this up not because I want sympathy for having been the one punk rock kid in Canora Ontario but because as I think about the internet every day in my work a lot comes from that moment in my life that it was so exciting I was so drawn in by the idea that anybody anybody could pick up a guitar write a song anybody could get a task cam four track cassette recorder and record an album anybody like me could get a pair of scissors some glue and a photocopier make a magazine and well today that just seems absolutely trivial at the time that was just revolutionary punk was a revolutionary movement a movement resistance against a monoculture of monoculture of culture and the thing that really has stayed with me from that time although I'm still as bold the other thing that has stayed with me other than the haircut is this DIY ethos that was absolutely central to what punk rock was and they came into the hearts and minds of tens of millions of people around the world and that ethos still guides me every day in leadership in parenting whatever I do and I think that ethos really has infused itself in ways that now are the maker movement are really a lot about what the web is and that's actually the kind of thing to John's point we need to think about with the web and the open web and I think that we haven't quite done and in fact are in danger of losing which is how do we build an ethos of the open web of the things we believe that really is in the hearts of you know most or all of the people that it touches so that it shapes who they are who their children are what we build into the future 10 years 20 years 30 years 50 years so that's that the theme I want to talk about is the ethos of the open web where there have been some victories that Mozilla has been involved in where we are now which is I think we're losing and you know how do we turn that around but I want to start a little bit with two sub themes that are really important to me one is heroes and who are the heroes that we look to and certainly in punk rock it was people like the clash and the sex pistols and the dead Kennedy you always need or benefit from heroes who kind of draw you and embody that ethos so I talk a little bit about heroes in the open web I also want to talk about Lego which to me you know the internet at its best it's just a big kid of Lego so it's for me a good way to think about what the open web is so we'll start with a little bit of a movie teaser on the theory that the theme of heroes and Lego and if you haven't seen the Lego movie and you don't want to spoil or leave now nothing's gonna stop me now this is the evil guy now there's a prophecy about the piece of resistance oh yes supposed missing piece of resistance that can somehow magically disarm the crackle give me a break I go is the super weapon carried away one day a talented lasso fellow a special one with face of yellow will make the piece of resistance found from its hiding refuge underground and with a noble army at the helm this master builder with thwarts the crackle and save the realm and be the greatest most interesting most important person of all times so so what's happened here is Mr. Business you know who has taken the crackle the evil weapon that he is gonna use to take control over the whole world of Lego and you know we've heard that there is a hero coming if we can just wait the hero will lead the resistance and you know for me I had the opportunity about five years ago to go and become executive director of Mozilla Foundation really helped reboot what we're doing and it went because those were my heroes the people who had founded Mozilla well before me and it started as John said in the late 90s became a foundation in 2003 and they had an ethos that drew me although it's an ethos that we have done a very poor job all of us but Mozilla included explaining to the world the two billion people on the web don't know what the open Internet is now the closest I have gotten before is there's two things we often talk about openness in terms of interoperability and the end principles and all of this stuff that we you know the kind of language we use here but to me the test of whether we're getting where we're going the ethos I believe in is an Internet where anyone can make anything and where anyone can share with anyone and so make anything is that Lego piece of it the HTML CSS JavaScript without asking anybody's permission you can make what you want and it's very open ended the share with anyone is an open network that anyone can get anything across and when Mozilla started as a foundation in 2003 that was not the Internet we were trending towards Microsoft had a monopoly on how people saw the Internet was 99% of the browser market they were taking that Lego set and moving it towards active X moving it away from a standard implementation of HTML the open Internet the Lego set was under threat and this group of people who I actually still in many ways consider my heroes even though I get to work with them every day the founders really of the Firefox era of the Mozilla project said we're only 10 people who got thousands of volunteers sure let's take on the biggest company in the world because we actually see the web as being under threat and they did an amazing thing they did you know something nobody thought was possible a non-profit that took on the most dominant software company in the world at its own game and built a set of values into a product that then went on to take 25% of market share and that vision of Firefox is very particular to I think something we can be proud of as Mozilla be grateful for as as people who care about the open web but should understand and see how we can seize again in the future which is they didn't just go and say you know Microsoft is bad or try to change policy although I do think the antitrust case against Microsoft was important in this story they said let's build our values into the way people use the Internet every day and let's do that with a piece of software people want that has you know trivial things but things that people desire like pop-up blocking and better security and then let's get that in the hands of hundreds of millions of people and that's what they were able to do and not only do for Firefox but they brought web standards across from Firefox into Chrome into Safari into IE even where now seems trivial but you can basically run advanced software across any platform and not worry what kind of computer you're on and that's because the open Internet one and it's because you know that the folks who made Firefox did play an important role I think as heroes in that way and the you know the result is the Internet we all know and love today YouTube Gmail all of those things were not possible until the web standards that underlie things like Ajax you know became commonplace on our computers but the thing is with that victory behind us it's not actually necessarily the case that that things are going well the companies that now own large percentage most of the Internet traffic that benefited from that themselves for business reasons start to wonder whether that open ethos to make anything share anywhere you know actually works for them or not and so we're actually at a different moment in the Lego movie right now so let's pause and look at that it's not just you bad cop that keeps messing up my plans people everywhere are always messing with my stuff but I have a way to fix that way to keep things exactly back out permanently behold the most powerful weapon of all the relics the raggle it's such a good movie you haven't seen it go see it so you know that I got kids who are 12 and 14 who I saw that movie with and loved it and they love the web as it is today and you know they're youtubers they both publish YouTube videos they love things like Zoella and Tyler Oakley who are two famous vloggers for them the Internet is awesome and you know it is a creative outlet that is unlike anything I grew up with in the television era and in many ways there's so much still to celebrate from the victories that have come and the things of the web has unfolded but you know at the same time if you think about the big tension like pre-praise crazy glue in the Lego movie it is between the construction set mentality and the open-ended box of Lego and we really have in many ways moved into the construction set era yes you can put things on Facebook yes you can put things on Instagram but in a very prescribed way and that may be good or maybe bad and there's a lot of freedom and wonder in that but also a lot of constraint and constraint that you know as Rebecca talked about this morning is a set of a small set of sovereigns of the Internet who decide how that's gonna work maybe care maybe you don't but it is very different than the open Internet where anyone can make anything and share with anyone the things you can make a prescribed and how they move around is increasingly limited in siloed and also prescribed but at the same time if we kind of take the health of our ESA ethos do a health check on it governments are also screwing with that ethos whether that is China or other places that are trying to block or America or other places are trying to surveil governments are screwing the Internet in ways that are palpable and widely understood that we all feel and certainly as people who stand for that ethos that open ethos you know feel under threat companies are doing the same thing and we are in what I think is actually an exciting fight around net neutrality in the US this summer and I think more and more important the way that mobile phones define how we see the Internet is really undermining virtually erasing that ethos and just you know one thought on that that often we don't consider for the next three billion people who come online we're gonna be about five billion people online within the next ten years this will be their only computer and this is primarily a content consumption device or a one-to-one communications device so imagine if that was your only computer and then imagine if that was the only computer of most people on the Internet and imagine if that set their expectations of what was possible that is very much the Lego construction set reality not the open ethos of the Internet and that you know just to underline that the thing that we really haven't paid attention to is we've gone from the most democratic distribution system for information ever the URL where anyone can make anything anyone can distribute to anyone to now some a situation where two companies control all the software distribution that will go to the next three billion people who get on the Internet and increasingly control the media distribution so we've gone from the most open distribution system in the history of humanity to the most locked down and we've loved it and that's where we are so that plus China plus you know the the black and white YouTube I don't feel awesome about the ethos of the open Internet surviving not because there's not a lot of good stuff we're doing because the people who come online in the next ten years just won't know what it is it'll just fade off into history and I don't want that to happen and so the question is where are the heroes and how do we find them which I think will be the subject of our talk but to get us there one last clip ruining the end of the Lego movie for you I know things seem kind of bad right now but there is a way out of this this is Emmett and he was just like all of you a face in the crowd following the same instructions as you he was so good at fitting in no one ever saw him and I owe you an apology because I used to look down on people like that I used to think they were followers with no ideas or busy on because it turns out Emmett had great ideas and even though they seem weird and kind of pointless they actually came closer than anyone else to saving the universe and now we have to finish what he started by making whatever weird thing pops into our heads all of you have the ability inside of you to be a groundbreaker and I mean literally break the ground kill off the pieces tear apart your walls build things only you can build defend yourselves we need to fight back to freeze us fighting back and so the message may seem trite and obvious that in all of us and everyone around us are the heroes and that's the theme of this movie that we do need to pick up the pieces of the Lego and build the reality we want and in doing that they chase away the evil bad crazy glue machines with cool weird spaceships that they build which all of us can clearly do with HTML CSS and JavaScript but that you know that the message is important in that the solution or the way to take the ethos that I believe in and I believe many of you believe in and make it pervasive make it something that lasts for decades or centuries inside of our hearts and in the way we shape what our society becomes comes from people picking up and building and this is a group of people who are doing that whether we're working on that neutrality policy trying to build an open phone operating system as Mozilla is trying to teach people to code all those things matter and that's what that scene is about and we're all doing those things and we're all failing still and that's the question that I want to engage with here is it actually isn't in this room certainly that we're going to get to enough weight to protect and grow and deepen the ethos of the open Internet and it's certainly not in that next three billion people that we'll be able to have an impact we have to look at how do we actually encourage a next generation of leaders of people who are going to be able to carry that ethos forward and that's the thing I don't know how to do because my kids they love just being youtubers and so I guess my question is for my kids the youtubers or for the farmer John mentioned like how do we build the next I would say two three five ten million people who carry forth the ethos of the open Internet and that's our question for today right and I'm and mark I'm glad that you brought up the next generation because I know you're talking about your kids and toddlers and babies that aren't even born yet I don't like toddlers and babies but my kids are the truth is out but shameless is actually a poster child for somebody who went from passive consumer in your high school days probably to now a fighter for the open Internet talk a little bit about what you're doing now but more importantly I'm interested in how you got from high school guy chasing girls to heat his words not mine to to I was there to the co-founder of open gov foundation well like any red-blooded American man I I got into this for girls and rock music and I'm not joking I use the Internet a lot in high school instant messenger that was how I picked up my ladies and jam bands so mark mark talked about punk rock I got into this through my heroes Jerry Garcia and train Astacio grateful dead and fish we started off trading music right actual male trading so I would burn CDs of shows that I had I'd send them off in the mail to some guy he would send some new shows back to me and we would form that relationship and then dial up turn to DSL and we didn't have to do that anymore we could just send those shows or didn't even need to engage we could download them right online and I found this community and this community came together on the Internet I didn't care about how it happened just that it did just that I could get my shows and add to my growing collection and then as I got older I would go to concerts and I would meet friends who I only knew via the Internet or through mail order trading they were making lot art and fan shirts and expressing themselves however they wanted and then turning around and selling that stuff online direct one-to-one relationships that freedom that sense of it's better together was how I got into all of this and that grew up until I was working in Congress still a huge deadhead still a huge fish fan and then this whole soap and pipa thing happened and when that popped up that was when I became a real fighter I was a passive consumer until that moment because at that point I said what I enjoyed as a young man instant messaging late at night with girls or trading or downloading shows that I wanted from the Grateful Dead or fish that's not going to be around anymore if we let Congress muck it up so I embraced those open web principles but I came at it from a non-technical background and I didn't really even care about the open web principles I cared about getting the music or getting the girl and that's how the up and gov foundation really started so Mark sermon what are you hearing there in what Seamus describes as a pretty organic story and coming to this ethos that you're talking about that could actually be practically applied to a bigger population of other passive consumers out there what I you know first of all I don't think you're quite a passive consumer you know you were sharing shows and I think that's a key piece of it is really how do we feel the internet and what do we expect from it right you expected to be able to trade music whether it's legal or not you expected the system to do that and so but with something was actually going to change that set of expectations I break the system so I think one of the things is how do we design and build products on the internet where the things people want build that set of expectations and I think that's really one of the reasons I'm so focused or we're so focused on phones right now is we aren't building those expectations right you know you don't have the expectation necessarily that you can share music in the same way on a mobile device so you know one thing is you probably cared about it more than more than you say it was easily activated because it was going to be taken away yeah and we're obviously talking to a room a room of friends right you're essentially preaching to the choir all of us tend to care about these issues and seem fairly knowledgeable about them but just a few weeks ago since we're in the middle of a net neutrality debate right now just a few weeks ago my friend and yours John Oliver made a really salient point which we're going to put up on the screen for you that sort of speaks to one of the big challenges of communicating this issue today the only two words the promise more boredom in the English language are featuring staying hearing hearing people talk about it is somehow even worse as anticipated the notice proposes to ground the net neutrality rules in section 706 of the telecommunications act of 1996 oh my god that is the most boring thing I've ever seen that is even boring by C span standards I would rather read a book by Thomas Friedman than sit through that I would rather listen to a pair of dockers and tell me about the weird dream it had so for those of you who didn't get to see the full 13 minute rant John Oliver made it went on his show last week tonight and talked about net neutrality for 13 minutes he renamed it into something that was a little bit more palatable for consumers to kind of get and the next I guess overnight in the next day users crash the FCC's open commenting servers talk to try and preserve net neutrality regulations and so what happened there was really fascinating in that it was really boring and yet somehow he was able to galvanize the public so I guess my question is do y'all have a branding problem I mean is this something that just the people in this room and the people on K Street and Sandhill Road care about as Michael Manus has said again and again I think we do absolutely and it's it goes back to my get in the girl or get in the show how I got that didn't matter and we all in this room because of who we are and where we are I think we like to talk about that sort of how the information travels from point A to point B and focus less on what that information is whereas most consumers of our products and most of our users only care about what's getting there from point A to point B and on top of that even some of the language that we've heard over and over and over again today puts off people and actually scares them open source open source open data open networks we've done a lot of focus groups dial testing large sample surveys with average everyday Americans those words actually paradoxically make them less likely to trust our products and use our products because when they hear open they hear hackable they hear viruses can get in my data can get out anybody can go in that's a real problem because if you're stuck at that level how do you get them to support the open internet principles that we all want to if all you're talking about are those words that can be scary so how do you solve for that well I think you know it is a branding problem and you know we need something like DIY that you know I see me in it and I want to be connected to that brand but I think we also have a you know it's a strategy or game plan problem that we need to solve and is actually where we need to solve for it which is we tend as lots of progressive movements actually historically have to play defense and not offense and I think that the real lesson what attracted me to Mozilla in the beginning was this offense play which is let's give people something they want and then in giving them something they want build those values build the opportunity build the expectation into that so I think you know partly we need to solve it I mean maybe there's Peters here and we can get some branding help but you know beyond the branding problem I think we need to look at how do we play offense one of the things that had heard kind of bandied around I guess coming out of PDF is imagining you know the web is actually something people do love and do want cable companies are not the people that that most folks love the most so you know one interesting often offense play that ties to branding is team web versus team cable in you know how we go after this is there is a deep emotional positive association with our lives online let's play offense on that as opposed to you know try and actually shut down and play defense against the bad guy yeah I mean the the pew pew polls I think are perfect if you look at how it tracks over time the internet is the hardest thing for people to give up when they're asked if you had to give up internet telephone TV your car internet was at the top I mean I think we there is something there we can build off of but I don't think we're building off of it yet it's amazing as a Torontonian that was the one thing they let Rob for keep when he went into rehab wouldn't give it up and his crocs you saw that photo he was wearing crocs under him so but if I'm a consumer and I'm getting my Netflix and I'm able to binge watch my orange is the new black or whatever it is then what difference does it make to me who owns the pipes I mean or if Netflix is paying a little extra to get that faster to me so long as I'm getting it and I'm not having like long buffering times I think that that's the problem is we're trying to like solve it on logic like that as opposed to be at a much more emotional level which is to say you know the brands you love the thing you love which is Netflix which is Mozilla which is whoever like are under threat in some abstract visceral way that you connect with emotionally and the brands you hate are you know trying to use government graft and bad politics to get some advantage for themselves I think that getting people to understand the pipes is actually not going to be the winning strategy I think that's what we've tried to do for too many years least in a short term I think in the long term there is a piece about treating understanding the digital world as being as essential as learning to read learning to write learning math that if you actually want in the long run to build at this ethos people need to understand to some degree how this stuff works not so you can win that neutrality debates but so they actually can have control of their lives so on the digital literacy point that's really interesting because we have policymakers that are making a lot of these decisions about setting a general sort of framework for our ethos in Congress and even when it comes to school board setting curriculum for what our kids are learning and so Seamus as somebody who was working in Congress co-founded your foundation with Congressman Issa talk a little bit about sort of the digital literacy component when it comes to policymakers what's sort of at risk here when our lawmakers don't understand the difference between a DM and a tweet as we famously saw with Anthony Weiner if I had a if I had a desk I would put my head down onto it right about now we all know that government doesn't get a lot of what we're talking about elected officials staff well but the staff the younger staff absolutely do and I think that Bill Hunt one of my colleagues back here Bill raise your hand no raise your hand Bill he's great at when we when we build our software and we talk to people is getting at those staffers who are younger it's all about making their lives more efficient easier more social more collaborative all of those values those buzzwords that we love but treating them like users so often folks in the open Internet world approach policymakers and approach staff in a default adversarial role with good reason but don't treat them like you would treat other users elsewhere with the support with the patients with the human-centered design I want to help you get your job done and make your life a little bit easier I think that's a huge huge huge missing component that does go a long way and I know there's some folks in this war in this room that were very successful lobbying against SOPA Evan Greer is he in here there you are I watched your messaging change you and Tiffany over time from when SOPA landed to when my mom was able to say I don't want SOPA and it was when you seized on the Bieber stuff yeah you take you take away my ability to see Justin Bieber movies or videos or songs he's singing on the internet what the hell no way once you got to that point that was the tipping point but it was when we stopped talking about the pipes and it's the same thing with policymakers when you talk about do it this way your bills will get passed your constituents will be happier those are the outcomes that they want and we can match those pretty easily and I think we're pretty close and I think that is the offense versus defense it's probably not offense versus but offense and you know we need to build we need to fight and I think we often go at this just with fight we promised that you all would be involved in a lot of this conversation and so John Bracken is our mic runner today our esteemed mic runner and then if I know a few of you kind of want to challenge the very notion of what we're talking about today so why don't we start with Waldo and go from there actually a security could you tell everyone who you are sir my name is Waldo Jake with I'm the director of the US Open Data Institute a night backed organization for which I'm very grateful so I would like to hear the other side of the net neutrality argument guys like Dave Harbour and organizations like the CWA with our communications workers America the union they oppose net neutrality there are I've heard some very good arguments on the other side and it seems more like a difference of philosophy I would like to hear either of y'all make a persuasive case against net neutrality because there is one to be made and like to hear more I wonder which one to make so do you actually want us to do that or we want to get more questions first as I guess you know my next question my quick one which would be different than the CWA's I mean I would actually argue that yes the CWA has a different philosophy because they come from a different time when we had a very different and I would argue worse communication system and they have a vested economic interest in it but that aside I think there are some good arguments and I think we will actually see multiple internet to emerge and we have a question of how do we keep net neutrality for the purposes of free expression for the having open markets all of the things that an open network lets you do and at the same time have the choice to opt out and have our own security and privacy and so there was a project that was going on that Harlow was telling me about yesterday at the open news hack weekend which was about offline mesh oriented networks where we really just want to be able to talk to each other because we don't want to be surveilled at all we really want to be completely off the main network infrastructure so you know I that's my one argument I would make in favor of having multiple internet which does then break net neutrality I think there's others you know that say Facebook would make in zero rating data in Africa that says you're going to give people more access because we're giving preferential traffic to somebody like Facebook I think there's lots of arguments that they can be made in favor in the end I do think that the democracy and the open markets that the internet can enable are so important that those the open network argument is the one that has to win I mean I agree with that and I would only add to that is the the notion of competition is we're talking we're talking here about really two providers if you go who had dial-up internet did everybody have dial-up internet at some point right okay you remember how those prices went down you started off you got that's AOL 600 minute CD that's all you the internet that you got this month as internet service providers who dial-up expanded then you got unlimited internet and so you had competition where something like free markets would work right now we're talking about Comcast Verizon mostly so two big guys is that true competition so even it with net neutrality rules do you really have the competition that we all think and are you going to get the benefits of the competition with only two providers I don't think so all right next question hi David Ryan from Arizona State University so we've talked about the ambiguity of explaining the pipes but another piece that I think is ambiguous for a lot of people is that companies that haven't been created yet could not exist because of net neutrality but I think that's an easier one to explain so I was hoping you might touch on that and and how we might go forward with that so unborn companies that are under threat if net neutrality isn't maintained as it is what maybe I'll take it for a second which is that I mean a key piece in my sort of open definition of make anything be able to share with anyone is inherently about not needing to ask permission and so you know they're being a level playing field in terms of who can do what and not having to ask whether or not I can do it and certainly you know the whether you like Facebook or not we wouldn't have had Facebook if Zuckerberg had to had to ask Harvard they wanted to set it up or we wouldn't have Mozilla if we'd had to ask Microsoft whether people could install Firefox on Windows and you know the permissionless innovation environment a level playing field for that is absolutely key to most of the things that we actually do love about the internet I guess and maybe this is another argument against net neutrality I think there are bigger threats to the unborn companies and so I do think we want innovations whether they're companies or activists or whoever to be able to get out there to the world without asking permission but frankly the smartphone operating systems are far far bigger friction and barrier especially when we're talking about the next three billion internet users for those unborn companies then that neutrality is likely to be and this kind of gets back at my earlier question though so if my reality is shaped by the parameters set by Google or Apple and that's just the way I understand my interaction with the web just as you know my we have a Chinese national who takes care of my daughter she didn't realize that she was censored when we kind of had these conversations her reality was what it was and so if my sort of understanding of where I can build and how I can build is shaped by whatever parameters were already set for me what difference would it make to me when I'm not even sort of aware of it I'm gonna think ultimately that tricky question but I think that is where the role of getting out there and actually building services that have that open internet ethos in them that that person may get in their hands is why we're trying to despite all likelihood of failure build Firefox OS and get it out into emerging markets where people are getting their first smartphone is so that they have you know they have a computer in their hand that works like a computer that if I write an app that's just for the three of us because it's easy to make an app on the device I can text it to you I don't have to send it through Mozilla I don't have to send it through Google right so if we start to build products that build in those expectations that's you know that's how we win with that person so there has to be kind of a compare contrast we have to compete with a different set of value propositions that build in the values we care about yeah it's interesting I think we're we're all seeking here is almost a new Renaissance we had it started in 1997 with the heroes of which you are one I'm not I just work for them I just don't sell yourself short but a new Renaissance well how did the the last Renaissance start it was the rediscovery and the redistribution of a poem a beautiful poem by Lucretius called De Rerum Natura or on the nature of things and this is how you pick up girls this ad no I think it's gonna work hey baby are you into the open internet that's how I do it but what what sparked the Renaissance there was a complete mind blown the entire Western hemispheres mind collectively was blown because this poem beautiful beautiful Latin that's what attracted people but it showed an entire new universe to folks who had been inside of a box for the whole Middle Ages and it was a simple poem that everybody copied reread read to one another that even even if they didn't like it it still showed a completely different worldview from what was accepted and what we're talking about here is a completely different worldview than the one that is accepted I don't know how we get there and I don't know what are on the nature of things will be but I think that there's some folks in this room who are actually starting to write that share it and spread it online but I think that the worry is we actually have felt that in the tens or hundreds of millions of people that new world but as the number of people who come online and experience different kinds of different visions of the internet don't experience that that poem may just you know fall away into the sands of history all right we got a question from the back all right hello my name is Latoya Peterson and I had a question for the panel but first I kind of want to direct people if you're not following the back channel there's a very interesting conversation going on about sex and gender and kind of a second conversation that's happening outside of the panel that's really intriguing yeah I noticed I was gonna say I noticed that photo in your slide your your slide presentation that there was one female in the group of these original punk rockers at Mozilla and so I wanted to ask you about how you thought about inclusiveness but Latoya you go first oh thank you well speaking of punk so I'm from DC and we have two very thank you and we have two different scenes right you have the punk rock scene we also have the go-go scene yeah right I'm representing cool disco dan today but you know there are many other reasons with this and I think that the overall conversation we're having about cultural context and getting people to understand really requires us to figure out how to open up right and so in DC there's definitely there were punk kids and there were go-go kids but there was also a lot of respect there were a lot of things in common so just because we didn't necessarily rock to the same music and sometimes we did sometimes we didn't it didn't mean that we couldn't have like similar values in common there's something out of nothing DIY resisting justification a lot of the things that are in both movements are very similar about caring about people about caring about spaces beyond commercialism right but I think sometimes particularly with open web activism we can get really really insular and really close and assume that everybody knows the things we're talking about assume that everyone's a maker assume that the world hasn't changed since the 80s and 90s and people aren't a little bit more responsive to corporate encroachment than they are so I think that one of the things I would like to hear people talk a little bit more about is how do you broaden the conversations outside of what you're most comfortable with and what kind of outreach and proactive things that you do to try to figure out how do we invite more people in yeah and I think that's I mean that's awesome comments and questions and I think it's not just that this is a closed group of people and the open web movement is a very kind of unidimensional group of people and we need to look at how we broaden that I think some of the stuff that has started to emerge a little bit on the edges of Fort Foundation in linking the civil rights movement and the open internet movement is some hint at what's possible I think the other pieces of this conversation at least in this version of it is tremendously North American in a place where the internet is not North American and the internet will matter is not North American and so I think we do need to solve those challenges as well and I think I struggle with in Mozilla is they also as an asset so to a question of what do we do about it very very Silicon Valley based leadership and very Silicon Valley based blinders on I think is something that we really struggle with but a global community that is predominantly not North American and how we actually create space for leadership of that community to be driving the direction of Mozilla is I think that I really try to push sometimes successfully more often than not unsuccessfully but I do think it would be to the point of looking at where is the next generation leaders look coming from look way beyond the borders whether there's this room or this country are y'all seeing any examples practical examples where it's working where where there is collaboration where the global community is getting better educated especially in places like China and Pakistan Turkey where are the are are they growing leaders there and in an effective way so I mean I think a very small way just in stuff we're working on is we're trying to really grow the digital literacy part of what we're doing as a grassroots effort and that's a place where we're seeing way more take up in South Asia than we are and say well maybe not no more than North America but like in in equal measure and in ways that are very different and adaptive and so that's one place I think we see it inside of ourselves and that's one example we focus on the U.S. so I uh okay sure yeah one another question from hi I'm cool Wadawa from Stanford but I also ran Wikipedia for a long time on the mobile side so I've basically spent all my time somewhere else so I take the more global perspective but I'm a little pessimistic obviously you know Firefox OS is kind of the big push right because for most people it's mobile or nothing and you guys have only sold one million devices so far so it's hard to build an ecosystem so I'm kind of thinking should there be a more radical approach to you know the open internet because we don't know if you're going to be successfully obviously would like that to happen but you talk about digital digital literacy with kids I mean I'm focused on kids as well but should we kind of start picking like where our battles are like concentrate resources because like what if you don't win you know you're not viable in a mobile operating space what are the other options so I mean I guess I didn't understand quite the last part in terms of concentrating resources because my argument would be that we need to actually make like dozens thousands tens of thousands of different bets like I actually think the the likelihood that Firefox OS as an operating system succeeds is way less than 50 percent I mean and so I think you know you do want to look at ways that everything from encouraging people to look at digital literacy on a massive scale to trying to disrupt the other mobile operating systems of which I think there are ways that we may engage in in that piece of it but I think part of it is the you know looking at how we back and encourage people who have ideas that we haven't thought of yet I think that's what really you know nobody knew that Mozilla or Wikipedia or any of the other things that we think of as having been successful disruptions nobody saw those coming in 1994 when we first got mosaic or 1993 when we first got mosaic it's like I actually don't know all the places to look and it's likely that the places that will have the impact and will shape it are you know not places we know and that's why I think the the previous comment is so critical is in the next two three years and next five years in the next 25 years like we are going to keep hitting those walls and unless the ethos we're talking about is infused in people in an incredibly diverse set of you know contacts you know we're we're maybe we'll win a little bit now but we're going to keep getting screwed so like I can give you my five strategies but I don't think that that's actually what matters I think what matters is how we solve the problem of really opening up to a much broader world and a much more diverse leadership and to that end and this is for either of you what what are y'all what is your foundation what is your and what is your foundation and company doing to try and be more proactive in reaching out to people of color women who whose voices and perspectives you will need to shape the next five ten hundred years five ten hundred of the internet yeah yeah yeah I mean I I think the biggest thing that Mozilla does is the community piece of it which is really focused globally on a tremendous amount of diversity and so that that part has been in ebbs and flows a part of who we are and I I feel these are parts of what we're doing is in the in the upcycle and so how you actually give those people like historically Mozilla has had a governance system which is separate from the company and the foundation where volunteers have a fair bit of decision-making power we really worked in the last couple years to build renew a kind of set of community leaders and decision makers who are from all parts of the world and so building that up is I think probably the most promising effort there are other things that I think are more traditional about building diversity inside the company inside the closer community in terms of education stuff that is targeting people who are underrepresented in our community or in our company but I and I think that stuff's important but in the long run I think that community leadership piece is that what's going to pay off yeah and I would say in the place so one of our products is is called Madison it's an online crowd sourcing tool for legislation policy regulation and it's working mostly in in local governments DC we got our DC friend folks back there that's one of the places that we're working and when we feature we so we feature different policy items that are going through and we kind of have to pick so when we look at what what we're featuring what we're trying to get out to people we're treating everybody all different colors all different creeds all different backgrounds and genders as user groups and so when we want to get more users involved in that process we'll feature policies that are of interest to them and that's just a start I mean we're literally just at the at the early days of figuring out how to make this work but we are seeing that that response and it's not it's not male female black white but it's this policy is of interest I want to get online and I want to say something about it I want to collaborate on it and we're seeing almost a perfect mirror of the cities in which we're working based on those policy areas so I think that if you present your your open internet principles to everybody where they start and where they stand and on issues that they care about you're almost back dooring in the things that we're trying to get across and involve those new communities we have time for about one more question up front Ron John hi I'm Lin Xiaoli from ASU and I work as a part-time web developer as I was doing my job I found out I have to specify a line of code for every different process because of the like different JavaScript implementations or they only accept certain type of audio formats or something like that do you think in the near future that the mainstream browsers will like work hands with hands and make the web a more open environment um I think that we're always trying or and I think one of the things that we really struggle with struggle with is not even necessarily a way to put it and one of the the issues when we talk about standards is when you've got you know five browsers four browsers out there there's a tension between innovating and then it means that you're not going to negotiate in advance how people implement those standards and truly becoming standardized where it is the same I mean like a bull tag across all the browsers is is the same because we've had it forever audio formats for example are something new and so there's still a lot of negotiation so mostly it's about how that negotiation happens I think the one risk I mean especially in mobile is there have to be incentives for that alignment to happen and and where what you see is you see the different browsers going more slowly and getting to the world of of kind of cross-platform you're talking about where they can keep some advantage in keeping the standard fragmented and I think you'll see that um tension for a long time especially in mobile where um you know Google may have um some interest in implementing a bunch of new web API standards at the same time that erodes their android kind of market share and so you know I think you're you're going to see arm wrestling for a long time all right and before we wrap I want y'all since we've this is this conversation has kind of careened all over the place one thing that we didn't get to touch on that we I just want to hit really briefly is obviously there is a business imperative it sounds great to be all open and have open source but um there's a reason why there's uh proprietary software out there that um moves fast and when it comes to development and makes a lot of money they they have that bottom line imperative and so um how do you think about sort of the business part of this um in order because because frankly you know making money is important in order to in order for a lot of these companies to succeed making money is very important very very important I think Waldo actually is one of one of my uh sort of load stars on this issue is that if you make something that's good enough uh and provides a service somebody's going to pay for it um that's not something that uh at least I have been in the open source world very comfortable with to start with um but we're coming up against vendors people who are working in codification for city laws for example who that's their their job they have mouths to feed they've got employees um how do we so we're partnering with them instead of going to war we're partnering with them to help them get better help them get more open and continue to innovate their industry and their companies to survive into a world of an open web um and we're getting the data so we're actually helping them turn their data to be more open and they're starting to use our open source software and then they're using both to turn around and sell a service to a city so hopefully it's benefiting their bottom yeah I mean certainly it even says in the Missile Manifesto it stands for all of this openness that that is in the context of of commerce that we have both an interest in a public and a commercial part of the internet existing it's certainly you know we believe in that but I think at the very base there also are core pieces that we need as a as a common predictable level playing field that is a public resource for for all of us I mean if we think I had a very bizarre experience if anybody is interested in U.S. non-profit tax law you know buy me a beer and I'll tell you about it but where I had to fight with the IRS over whether protecting the internet was a charitable act and you know quietly in the background over three years and about half a million dollars in legal fees we want and the the reason is or the the the thing we want on is if you go back to 16th century English law where they established you know what is a public good maintaining the roads was a public good if I put my money into keeping the roads open because commerce because people go into church is people going to visit their families whatever you're doing can travel over them that is providing a public good and ultimately the internet has become so central to our lives that we need that public good layer we need the networks to be open we need the standards and the programming languages that anyone can use in common and yes of course you want to be able to make money and make art and meet girls or do whatever you want on top of that but the internet ultimately has become and must remain a public good sorry yes I was fair point all right um with that um our time is up thank you guys for participating in this discussion um really substantive stuff thank you guys for all your thoughts mark serman and shameless crap thank you