JT’s blog

We need your feedback on the Firefox support site alpha

Thanks to the tremendous work of the Firefox support community, the SUMO alpha is now live at http://support-stage.mozilla.org.

We need your help to kick the tires of the new site and to tell us whether or not you think the content will be helpful for the average Firefox user. To give feedback on a particular article, please do so in the comments section on the article’s page. For all feedback related to the actual site (not articles), please post your comments at the SUMO newsgroup.

Thanks again everyone for all your help. We still have more articles to write, more articles to edit and more work to be done on the SUMO site, but now is an appropriate time to celebrate all the hard work and accomplishments thus far!

L10n of support.mozilla.com

This is a follow-up to my earlier post about localization of the Firefox support project on support.mozilla.com.

The first step in localization is launching the beta en-US version of SUMO. Once we have a few weeks of good user feedback and data, we can determine which support articles are the most useful and stable (there is even a metric for this!). The most useful/stable articles will be rank ordered for localization.

Why the useful/stable metric? We want to make sure that users in all locales have current and correct articles. Some locale support teams will be robust enough to manage all the necessary changes in existing and new content. Some locales, though, will have smaller teams who will need to do high leverage translation—so we want to make sure the articles they translate aren’t going to change the next day.

The SUMO knowledge base beta should be live in September. We are hoping to begin localization of SUMO no later than October for those locales who want to participate. To help make this process easier, there will be a staging area for localized content before the support.mozilla.com platform is launched in your locale. If you want to get involved, please contact me at jt at mozilla dot com.

What if I don’t just want to translate? We know that there are some support issues that are unique to particular locales. We also know that different locales have different ways of approaching technical support. Mozilla wants to ensure that all of our volunteers have the correct information so that they can figure out the best way to share that content with users in your locale.

I just got a support phone call for Firefox…

…and it reconfirmed to me why the work we are doing on Firefox support is very important.

All she needed help with was to import her bookmarks from IE, but she had no idea where to do it and then where to look for them (she may have actually imported them as a part of the install– she didn’t think so– but that is beside the point). The point is that our work on SUMO will positively impact the daily lives of Firefox users. This was a woman who was told to use Firefox because it would make her online banking easier and better. Think of all the people like this who we will be able to help keep or even turn in to passionate users of Firefox.

The phone call also reaffirmed to me that we have a long way to go content wise on SUMO. We have are off to a great start, but there are still so many things that people need help with. That said, I still do think our strategy of getting the initial article list live and then using the learnings from how people actually use the SUMO site (what they search for, etc.) to determine what new content we create is the correct one. Using those learnings will also tell us how we can make all this great content easy to find–even when users don’t know exactly what they are looking for (which is equally important).

So, thanks again to everyone for all your hard work. You can still get involved. Visit our SUMO contributor page to learn how.

Seeding Mozilla marketing in India and beyond

Mozilla in India…
Seth B., Manager of Mozilla’s community giving program, and Chris Hofmann (chofmann), Director of Special Projects for Mozilla, went on a 2 week community building trip to India as a part of our larger objective of seeding Mozilla marketing around the world. Seth’s blog has an incredible account of the trip (many great blog posts). I recommend that you check it out. A quick summary is that Seth and Chofmann both feel that the Mozilla community in India is incredibly vibrant and excited to help spread Firefox.

… and Beyond
As I mentioned earlier, Rishi, one of our interns, has been researching the state of the web and the state of Mozilla in Russia, Australia, Pakistan, Singapore, Turkey, Canada and Mexico. We will be publishing what we have learned within the next week. We look forward to your feedback on the information and possible next steps.

What’s up in Brazil and Argentina? Lots!
I have heard from a few of our Brazil volunteers that they have begun organizing action teams around getting local computer makers (small businesses– almost like mom and pop shops) to put Firefox on all the computers they build. Mozilla Argentina volunteers are testing a similar program at Internet Cafes/LAN Houses. We are all excited to hear how these efforts work and see if they can be replicated elsewhere.

1 week until SUMO knowledge base alpha– we need your help!

If all goes to plan, the Firefox Support Working group will be pushing the support.mozilla.com knowledge base live for community review next Friday, August 3rd.

We still have some open articles, as well as plenty of claimed articles that need writing and editing. Check our our community contributor page to learn how you can help. It is going to take a full team effort to get the alpha live by the end of the week, but given the overwhelming response thus far, I think it is doable.

Forum design feedback needed
We are now in the process of designing the look and feel of the SUMO forums. If you have any feedback on what they should look like (remember, we have already chosen TikiWiki as the solution) or any examples of easy to use support forums out there, please contact me at jt at mozilla dot com.

Do you know any good chat solutions?
We also are looking for live chat solutions. If you know of any good easy to use chat solutions, please pass those along too!

First Enterprise Working Group call a success!

As I mentioned earlier, we now have an Enterprise Working Group that is exploring how we can make Firefox easier to use/deploy for large organizations (companies, schools, governments, universities).

Check out a quick recap of today’s discussion. Thanks to everyone who participated.

The next call will focus on improvements/features in Firefox that would be helpful for enterprises. We are still looking for participants in the group, so definitely feel free to join. Once we have details for the next call, I will also post them here.

47 out of 64 Firefox support articles claimed (WOW)!

We are on a roll here folks! Great work by a large number of volunteers.

If you want to get involved, please jump on in today! Get started now and claim your article(s). It is an easy way to have a major impact on millions of Firefox users.

I will be posting more information soon on SUMO next steps.

28 of 64 Firefox support articles claimed

Saturday has been a busy day for the Firefox support article writers. We now have people signed up to write 28 of the 64 articles needs to launch the SUMO project.

You too can join in the fun! Get started now and claim your article(s). It is an easy way to have a major impact on millions of Firefox users.

Get ‘em while they’re hot: write a Firefox support article

12 of the 64 Firefox support articles have already been claimed… sign-up for an article today before you miss out!

The number of people who have volunteered for this project has been amazing so far (10 different people– none of them paid to do it)! Get started now (even if you can’t write the article today– put your name next to the article you want to write).

Can’t decide whether or not you should do it?
Tens of millions of Firefox users will benefit from your work. We make it easy to get involved and we are definitely happy to answer your questions.

Don’t have the time?
Writing an article shouldn’t take too much time. We have done much of the research for you. Most of the articles have sources you can refer to in writing the article. Plus, it is way more fun that doing your laundry.

But JT, I’m a really, really, really bad writer: If you can’t write, I’m sure you are good at communicating in other ways. Use those skills to get others to help out.

I don’t know how to use the wiki?
Tell me which article you want to write (jt at mozilla dot com) and I will sign you up. Then, write the article, send it to me and I will post it for you.

The SUMO project is a Mozilla wide effort that needs your help. Get started today. Thanks in advance!

Write a Firefox support article today!

After many months of hard work, we are now ready to start writing support documentation for the support.mozilla.com project!

This is an awesome way to impact the experience of tens of millions of people in a very real way. Let’s be honest, how often do you get to do that? Whether you are an engineer, writer, marketer, salesperson, student or none of the above, you can write support documentation for Firefox. It’s easy to get started!

But I am not a good writer! No problem… we need people who can write out the core content. Once we have that, we can have people who are “writers” and “editors” clean it up and make it sound pretty.

Get started now by following the instructions on our “Get Started Now” page!

Update:
We are 1 down and have 63 more to go! (Congrats to Andrew for finishing the first draft!)

I will be posting daily updates on our progress. Please help us spread the word!