I'm Ari Jaaksi, SVP of Connected Devices. AMA

As a contributor and a lead in my community, how can I gather more knowledge on IoTs Mozilla aims to connect, learn these technologies and get hands on experience and share that knowledge with other fellow members. Also how can I procure these devices? We plan to organize a Hackathon in near future.

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We gotta show progress. End user traction, innovation …

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I like your question! We’ll figure this out ASAP. We will have more stuff open as soon as we get things in order. Then you can better see what is in the thinking at the moment. I urge you to now go and study about the space – players, technologies, user adaption – in order to strat to for your ow opinion.

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We believe in community! As I said it is a unique aspect of all we do. But after all these years we saw less and less traction in our smartphone activities. We simply could not create end user traction and partners were going away. It was not that we didn’t believe – we believed and we tried – but we did not succeed. Unfortunately.

I did like to ask if there would be a different product for different market for Connected devices.

For example Firefox OS smartphone was Focused on emerging market.

Is there such a plan for Connected devices?

And then how do we shape that into ideas from volunteers on connected device.

I am from and I have a different idea on connected device for Africans.

Useful connected device in Africa would be different from iot in Europe due to different problem.

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Why the Mozilla top lead – Mitchell Baker and Chris Beard – are soundless about the Firefox OS project turn? It’s not only a branch decision, but a Mozilla strategical evolution. Firefox OS was introduced as a critical project for Mozilla entire project (and for the Web too).

It’s Mozilla lead role to chart the course for the whole Mozilla. The feeling of assurance in Mozilla leadership should be stronger – internally and externally.

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This is a very strategic and good question about how we can benefit from a strong community. We need to learn from different markets and needs all over the world. I believe that eventually we need to differentiate for different markets. When and how – dunno yet. I’m all ears!

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Question from mozmoderator

Why do we need a non-public process to innovate? How does that work with the Mozilla open culture?

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You said: “But business decisions are done by Mozilla, influenced by our discussions with partners, consumers, participants.”

Since Mozlando there are no more partners, could you please tell why did you include them in this decision then?

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We have all kinds of ideas being discussed. Most of them will not go forward. Some discussions include sensitive elements, such as the availability of resources, possible partners, and other sensitive topics relevant to MoCo. Some of them immediately prove to be ideas not suitable for Mozilla to pursue. We feel that most of those discussions are not beneficial to the community as they do not go anywhere, and we therefore want to go public only after we are a bit more certain that a wider community would benefit.

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We actually have partners and contractual obligations to old partners, chipset vendors, OEM, carriers. And some of them are interested in what we are doing next. So they do not make our decisions but they are a part of the mix

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it would be good to know which partners are interested in this project, in the same way we knew who were working with us on Firefox OS

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Hey everyone,

We are about to close this great AMA. Ari will do his best to keep answering questions in the next 5 minutes :slight_smile:

Cheers.

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Do Firefox OS for smartphones end means Mozilla is resigning on feature phones too ?

Yeah, this was already announced last year. Don’t have the link here — running out of time, sorry

Hi, I am Dorothee, Moz Rep in Cameroon. Now we are in Connected Devices project. Good. I need to know what would be done with Firefox OS phones available in shops around Africa?

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Thanks everyone for your great questions, time is up for today.

This has been an important experience for everyone and I’m sure we will keep doing these kind of conversations to improve and shape the future of Connected Devices at Mozilla.

Cheers.

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Thank you everybody. It’s been great! I really enjoyed this even though I’m a slow typist. I look forward to work closely with you all. Volunteers are an integral part of what we do and how we do things.!And as you know, John and George are a members of my leadership team. So feel free to reach out to them, too. Take care!

–Ari

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A post was split to a new topic: Discussion from the AMA with Ari continued