Mozilla's Web FWD: an innovation accelerator

Mozilla has announced a new program called Web FWD, designed to encourage Open Web innovation by the community. Mozilla is looking for ideas for products which fit into a number of problem areas, fits with their philosophy of an open web and has at least some working code. Mozilla is targeting hackers, developers, entrepreneurs and builders with the offer of hothousing their project or product.

For projects which meet these criteria, Mozilla will host the project for four weeks at its offices around the world, giving the team a chance to work alongside local Mozilla people, access key personnel elsewhere and be mentored in technology, scalability, security, marketing, community and business strategy. The project team will also get financial support during the four weeks and help with IT infrastructure. At the end of the process, the plan is that the team will have a "minimum viable product" and the team and Mozilla can decide how to advance that.

The first four-week period will start in August at Mozilla's San Francisco offices. Mozilla is intested in projects related to identity, user mediated data, contextual integrity, core web technologies, social connectivity, personalisation and "Read-write" ability, and making and keeping the web hackable. Mentors include Dion Almaer and Ben Galbraith, Mitchell Baker (Mozilla Foundation chairwoman), John Lilly (former CEO of Mozilla), Kevin Fox (Fury.com), John Resig (jQuery creator now at the Khan academy), Aza Raskin (former creative lead for Firefox) and many others. Further details are available in an FAQ.

(djwm)