If you are an Amazon Prime subscriber, you can check out one free book a month. However, Amazon doesn’t make it really easy for you to figure out which books are eligible to be checked out from the Owners’ Lending Library.
To see the list of books you can check out, search for “prime eligible” in Amazon Kindle Books.
If you find one you like, add it to your wishlist. Then on your Kindle, you can browse your wishlist and check it out.
I hear a lot of people worrying about getting more visibility. While I think visibility is important, I think worrying about visibility is the wrong way to go about it. Worrying about visibility makes people do weird, self-centered things.
If you want to be more visible, talk more about other people! Meet people, listen to them, laugh with them, spread their story.
Here are a few simple things that I think raise your visibility:
I’m really excited to tell you that Shezmeen Prasad has joined the Mozilla Developer Engagement Team to help us figure out our event strategy and presence. I’m not the only one that’s excited. So many people were excited that I started to get worried. I warned Shez that a ton of people had a lot of work lined up for her! I need not have worried. Not only has Shez stepped up to the plate but she’s batting it out of the park.
Shez has a lot of experience with event management and open source as well as working across time zones and cultures. She’s Canadian (like a surprising number of Mozillians), has checked out the world (including a 12 month stay in a small town in Norway) and has worked for several open source companies like eZ Systems and ActiveState.
At Mozilla she’s going to help us align our goals with our web developer event presence, work with Mozillians every where (including Latin America and Asia!) to help make sure we reach out to web developers effectively and help us spread Mozilla love around the world!
Shez started at Mozilla the week of Halloween and jumped right into the spirit …
Jess, Shez & Luciana, Halloween 2011
My son broke his arm this week and had 2.5 hours of surgery this morning. Firefox kept him company throughout. (When the nurse asked him where Firefox came from, he told her “Mommy’s work.”)
Firefox even keeps watch over the elevated arm.
Firefox the web browser has also been a life saver. Watching movies over the internet with Firefox is a good way to stay still …
High context cultures value personal relationships over process. You have to know someone before you can trust them and work with them. They also tend to be less explicit and rely more on tone of voice, gestures and even status to communicate. Typically Asian countries are more high context than Western countries. Think Korea and Japan.
Low context cultures are process driven. They rely on facts and processes. Their communication style is much more direct and action-orientated. They are orientated towards the individual rather than the group. Western cultures like the US and Germany are considered low context.
So if you start a project and send email to a bunch of folks and ask them to just jump in and contribute, which group do you think will get going more quickly? The low context culture folks. As long as you define the process and procedures, they are willing to work alone and with people they don’t know very well. That’s how open source works. So our projects are optimized for low context cultures.
What happens to the high context folks when invited to participate on a mailing list? They have a hard time sending emails and contributions to people they’ve never met and have no relationship with. (Imagine walking up to a random person on the street and critiquing their dress style. It’s that kind of awkward.) Would they make good contributors? Absolutely! Do we need to find other ways other than “join the mailing list” to get them involved? Absolutely! For an example of what’s worked well, see the great work that Emily Chen, Pockey Lam and Fred Muller and others have done with GNOME Asia.
As I think about developer engagement at Mozilla, I realize we need to have different plans for different cultures. It’s even more important to be present in person for high context cultures. To establish a personal relationship before you invite them to join your project. (Or ask them to use open technologies or spread the word.) We should be following up in different ways, setting up different programs for different countries. Luckily the Mozilla Reps program will help provide the infrastructure for this.
How do you think we should encourage high context cultures to get involved with open source? If you are from a high context culture, how did you get started?
Transparent voting is an idea that is ideally really useful but also completely useless in GNOME.
Some people in GNOME have been asking for transparent votes. When the board votes, they would like to know who voted which way. I totally agree with them – it’s important to know how different board members think so that you can make educated choices. However, I also agree with the people that say that it would be totally useless.
For example …
Yesterday and today the board discussed where GUADEC 2012 will be. It’s a big decision and not one we took lightly. We discussed it, we invited the potential hosts to come and talk to us, we debated it and we debated it some more. Many hours in total.
And yet when the vote happened, it was unanimous.
So what happened? If the vote was unanimous, why all the discussion? Because it wasn’t really unanimous. We all liked different points of different bids. And some of us weren’t sure which way we wanted to vote to start with. Then we discussed and some people changed their positions, others remained firm. We discussed some more. And although it was a unanimous vote in the end, I believe several board members still might have preferred a different bid. (They were all awesome.) The unanimous vote was the way for everyone to say “I’m behind the group decision.” More than half of us were 100% behind one bid and the few of us that weren’t were signalling that they agreed. They were willing to go with the group decision. They signaled that by the way the voted. You’d have to see their body language to understand.
So while it would be interesting for people to know how individual board members feel about issues (like maybe copyright assignment), seeing the results of votes is unlikely to be informative. We need to figure out how to convey the conversation, not the vote results.
I have no problem with businesses that require cash payments (except for the inconvenience to me) but I recently found out that a small business I work regularly with asks for cash to avoid taxes.
Now there’s several legitimate reasons a business might require cash. One of our favorite restaurants only accepted cash. People living day to day on odd jobs or paying daily contractors might find cash more convenient. I wouldn’t normally question why they wanted cash other than random curiosity. Would I worry that they weren’t paying their taxes? No, I’d consider that their responsibility, not mine.
But now that this business wants cash to avoid taxes? Now I pay with a check.
Is it my job to enforce US tax law? Nope. (Or at least I don’t think so.) Is it my moral obligation to not enable a crime? Yes. Am I being a too goody-goody? I feel like I might be perceived that way. Especially since in the eyes of many taxes are necessary evil and would think not paying taxes is a less evil crime than stealing from a neighbor even if they were for the same amount. If I really want to do the right thing, I should probably stop doing business with them.
I feel it’s not fair to society that some don’t pay taxes. They use the public roads and schools and need to contribute like everyone else. (I do believe there should be exceptions for those that don’t make enough money to survive comfortably. But that should be worked out fairly across society.)
It reminds me of all the social experiments on cooperation. People are willing to take a personal hit (like pay money) in order to punish people who don’t cooperate. I don’t have a link for the studies but see the Tit for Tat strategy in Prisoner’s Dilemna experiments for an idea of what I mean.
Rob Hawkes joined our team. Welcome, Rob!
He’s been getting up to speed with all the cool things going on in Developer Engagement and is really looking forward to settling in and sinking his teeth into the projects that he’s taking on. You can read his blog post about starting at Mozilla (and working remote.)
Some cross-browser testing for the Jetpack SDK docs.
With the Web O Wonder site going away soon, we are refreshing the Demo Studio on MDN to make it more presentable to not just developers, but consumer and the press as well.
With feedback from the community and a focus on bringing more to Web developers on MDN, we have redesigned the MDN home page to emphasize the documentation and demos we have at http://developer.mozilla.org. With a new header, layout, and messaging about our vendor-neutral approach to community collaboration, we’ll be introducing the new home of MDN at part of the MDN 0.9.6 release as well.
John Karahalis has been encouraging web developers to share their work on the Mozilla Dev Derby, has begun applying Scrum practices within the MDN development team, and will soon be working with MDN users to ensure they will be pleased with the new version of the site.
The MDN Doc Sprint was a success!
Sheppy’s been writing about three versions of Firefox at once! Sometimes literally simultaneously! Woohoo!
The Developer Engagement Team
Christian, Janet, Jay, John, Louis-Rémi, Paul, Rob, Sheppy, Will and Stormy
Yesterday I reported in for jury duty. I was impressed by the whole process. But while I left feeling like I’d been a part of something big, over the course of the day I ended up feeling unsettled and dissatisfied. The case we were on was abruptly closed by mistrial about 3 hours into the morning. It’s not so much that I think justice wasn’t served (there will be another trial, I assume) but I really feel for all the people who put a lot of emotional effort into getting through the day and some of them are going to have to do it again.
Here’s how the day went, for those curious about jury duty.
We showed up at 8:30. (Actually we were supposed to show up between 8:15 and 8:30. I showed up at 8:25 and most of the other ~50 jurors were there already. They had to pull up an extra chair for me. Only one other person showed up later than me. For the record, I was hanging out in my car with my smartphone.) We watched a 10 minute video on why we have a jury system and why it’s such an important thing. It managed not to be too cheesy.
We were then escorted to the court room where the prosecutor and defense were already waiting. The judge showed up, we all swore an oath, and then they called up 12 of us to begin the jury selection process. In spite of his black robe and high seat, the judge came across as a very friendly, likeable guy. He managed to ask really personal and tough questions of all of us in an nonthreatening manner and while he didn’t make it lighthearted (the subject wasn’t lighthearted), he did keep the day flowing and made everyone feel like they were treated with respect. We felt valued and respected.
I was relieved to hear the trial was expected to take less than a day. At that point, I was interested in serving. (I had been terrified I was going to end up on a six month trial.)
We all got asked some standard questions (name, age, education, occupation, length of time you’ve lived here, kids, parents, spouses, their occupations, do you have any friends or family that are in law enforcement, sued anyone, been sued, been victim of a crime, etc.) We had to answer each question out loud for the whole group. (You could request to answer a particular question in private.) Then the judge followed up on some questions and asked some additional questions. Note that the whole group of 50 potential jurors is still sitting there listening and 12 of us are answering each of these questions.
After that each of the attorneys got their turn. They used their jury questions to make points. The defense attorney in particular really wanted to make sure we knew that putting her client on the stand might be a bad move for him and did we understand why. She was really condescending about how she asked questions. But perhaps I just didn’t like her after she told me engineers had a reputation for being poor communicators and could I tell her about a time when I thought I’d perfectly clear and yet the other person just hadn’t gotten it. I don’t think she was implying that I was a bad communicator but that all the “geeks” I worked with were. I really wanted to tell her what I thought about that but I stuck to the question. I told her nobody is such a good communicator that they can’t be misunderstood. (Perhaps that’s why she chose me to stay. After listening to the victim though, I believe the victim was communicating perfectly clearly. If the guy didn’t get it, he had problems.) I can’t say I liked the prosecutor’s questions any better though. She tried to explain “reasonable doubt” by asking me if I stop at every green light. I hate rhetorical questions that you are forced to answer in public to make someone else’s point. Especially when you don’t get to ask questions back. (Perhaps that’s why I liked the judge – we were allowed to ask him questions.)
One woman had to recount her personal experience with domestic violence including kidnapping and beatings and the subsequent trial for the entire group of 60+ people at the public trial. (She could have asked to answer them in private.) She was not dismissed and she had to answer more questions about her experience for both the attorneys and then she wasn’t chosen for the jury. I really felt for her. What a shitty way to spend your morning.
They chose 6 of us to serve as jurors and we got a short break. The jury room was nice with windows, a couple of private bathrooms, food, water, and rather alarmingly to me, a very large selection of magazines. (How long were we going to be in there?) We were allowed to use our phones in the break room though so we could catch up on voice mails and emails.
The jury ended up being half men, half women. Three of us from my small town, none from the town where the crime took place. All of us were college educated (which was not the case of the pool they pulled from.) Two were teachers. Three of us were in technology or engineering.
We were sworn in (again) and the judge told us what the trial was about. A guy was charged with trespassing and interference of telephone services.
Then the attorneys gave their opening statements.
According to the prosecutor, the victim had broken up with her boyfriend. He had been calling nonstop, showing up at her work place and her hang outs. The day in question, he was waiting in her parking garage for her. In spite of the fact that she repeatedly told him to leave her alone, he followed her up to the apartment, stood in the door for a while, came in and continued hounding her. When she reached for her phone to call 911, he grabbed her wrist and threw her phone to the ground, shattering it. She then went to a neighbor’s apartment to call 911 and stayed there till the cops came.
I ended up liking the defense attorney even less than I had during jury questioning. Her argument was that her client (a large body builder) felt like he was being attacked (by a small woman) and the cell phone got accidentally knocked to the floor. Proof of this, in her mind, was the fact that he had not destroyed the whole apartment. I wondered why she was creating mental images of slashed sofas and shattered furniture in our minds. (She mentioned these several times.) She also (later in the case) argued that the victim should not have expected her client to understand “please go away, leave me alone” when repeated 15 times because he had a previous brain injury and she knew about it.
Then the victim took the stand as the first witness. My biggest regret about the mistrial is that she will have to tell her story all over again to a whole new group of people in front of that same guy and face challenging, tricky and mean questions from the defense all over again. (Note that the victim is not the one that decides to prosecute cases like this.) The defense attorney was obviously trying to make the victim lose her composure. For example, the victim was asked when she last had sex with the defendant. She said the first weekend in April. A couple of minutes later, the defense attorney started saying, so you last had sex with him the last weekend in April and proceeded to talk about it that way for the next 5 minutes. Without a question, so the victim couldn’t correct her. Then when she asked the victim to find the date on the calendar, she gave her a hard time about “but you said the last weekend in April!” It was all just theatrics.
But the defense attorney won this round. She got the victim to say that one of the reasons she didn’t want to date the defendant was because she learned about his criminal record.
The minute “criminal record” was said, the trial was over. Mistrial.
The jury is not supposed to know if the defendant has a prior criminal history and, as the judge said, it’d be really hard to erase it from our minds.
So I don’t know which way I would have voted. I know which way I was leaning but there were still several witnesses and other evidence to examine. I do feel very bad that the victim will have to take the stand again. After listening to her, I am sure she would just much rather the whole thing went away. I wish her the best and I hope the guy leaves her, and all other women, alone in the future when they say “leave me alone”.
As an interesting side note, in Colorado the jury is allowed to question the witnesses too. We were given paper to write our questions on. We would then pass them to the judge and if admissible and he’d ask them for us. We all had lots of questions but we had to wait for the attorneys to finish their questioning first so we never got to them.
