Volunteer Engagement 2.0

Chapter 9A New Engagement Model for the Internet Era

Mark Surman

Executive Director, Mozilla Foundation

Eleven years ago, thousands of volunteers rallied behind a small but scrappy Mozilla team to launch the campaign that eventually broke up the greatest monopoly the Internet had ever known.

At the time, if you had a computer, the chances were good that it came with Microsoft's Internet Explorer installed on it. This meant that your gatekeeper to the web, an open global network whose founders intended that it would be a public resource shared by all, was Microsoft, a single private company. Microsoft did not have a superior product. In fact, Internet Explorer 6 (IE6), released in 2001, was so universally disliked that it would later show up ...