This is Zak Greant's weekly report on his activities for the Mozilla Foundation from January 19th to 25th, 2009.

Wading through heaps of Mozilla email and feeds last week paid off this week. Instead of worrying about what I hadn't read or wondering where I was duplicating other's work, I was able to focus on program development with most of my effort going into developing the Mozilla Social Movement Program Concept, working on the Mozilla Manifesto Stories experiment and catching up with my peers. At 54 hours, the week was a bit long but I was glad to be able to focus. …

I want you to tell me the story of how you got started with the Net.

Tell me how your passion was sparked and why it keeps coming to full flame.

Tell me why the Net matters to you, even after all of the long days, short nights and wrecked weekends.

I’ve been writing my story because I need to understand why I care deeply for what the Net is and what it means.

I want to read your story for the same reason.

Don’t hold out on me now. I can see your data trails in my server logs: a few hundred of you trudging in from RSS subscriptions, the PHP, Mozilla and MySQL planets, Boris’ …

In 2002, a short while after I started at MySQL, I saw Lawrence Lessig present at OSCON. The presentation was extraordinarily good and Lessig is a tremendously passionate, genuine and compelling orator.

I immediately revised my presentation style. I stole what ideas and style I could. While I was mostly presenting about MySQL and PHP at the time, the ideas served me well (though the style has at times fit me about as well as a young child fits their parent’s clothes.)

Five years have passed since then, and I have given a hundred or more presentations. Never have I presented as well as Lessig that night, but I still keep trying. In a few days, I am going to have to try a lot harder.
…

Summary

A good week - we made progress on the Internet as Public Good Symposium, which is the major task on my Mozilla plate right now. However, an unexpected event at another client meant that my Friday was a bit messed up. Will work on reviewing bugs and other missed responsibilities over the weekend.

Activities

• Worked with Berkman and Harvard Business School teams to help plan and present the Internet as Public Good Symposium.
  • Event wiki now online, but still private. - started putting in content. Will make public after panel participants have a chance to review.
  • Conf. call with available IPG team members to sort out logistics, invitations and distribute tasks.
  • Set up database to store info on who’s invited, who’s coming and so on.
• Minor bits of work helping Mozilla Corp. team plan their OSCON presence …