• has produced numerous projects that have since become core components to the Mozilla Foundations work efforts,
• helped us run international events in Barcalona and London,
• lead numerous community events worldwide.

We wanted a platform where people could let people could tell the world about their web projects, have the community help them out and have them made better. We received loads, with some of my favourites being:

• popcorn.js
• the Mozilla Journalism project
• Hackasaurus
• Universal Subtitles
• The New Social Web Project
• Social Book Publishing
• Peer to Peer University
• the Open Badges Initiative

These are all amazing projects but you might have noticed one thing – they’ve all now outgrown what we provide at drumbeat.org. They have their own websites and twitter streams with some having their code posted on github for community involvement.

Now we have these tools and sites we’re looking at moving our focus from being a community of web builders to a community of web makers who will use the tools that we have previously made. We think it’s time that we let it relax in a warm chair by the fire with its’ coat and slippers and remember the good old days and gaze lovingly at what the things that it has created go on to become. Last year when we carried out a survey on how we could evolve drumbeat.org and discovered the two main reasons we found on why people were signing up was to hear about what Mozilla are up to and to contribute to an existing drumbeat project. Thankfully our plans for drumbeat.org will allow people to continue doing that.

So what does this mean for you?

On March 1st we will be turning off new site registrations, new projects and existing project content updates; recently the number of new projects coming in has dwindled and project updates have contained large amounts of spam anyways.

drumbeat.org will remain live but will be used to direct people to our site for web makers (URL to be decided) and provide access to the now external websites of our major drumbeat projects. It will be used to tell the story of what it created and what Mozilla are doing with those creations.

What about my project page?

On March 1st your project page will be turned off and redirect users to the homepage (drumbeat.org). If you let us know we can set up redirects from your project page to your new web presence so to not loose any SEO-juice you’ve built up. Please contact us or leave a comment below and provide the drumbeat URL and where you would like us to point that to. Using Hackasaurus as an example that would be https://drumbeat.org/en-US/projects/hackasaurus/ and http://hackasaurus.org

What can I do to keep my project alive?

As mentioned above if you’ve already set up an external project website it will be fine. Up to March 1st you may also use our site messaging system to message your followers of your plans. If not then there are numerous online tools that are free and can be used to keep people informed.

Project updates

Set up a project blog! There are many free options out there, some we would recommend are tumblr, blogger or wordpress.

If you’re looking for more short-hand options then creating a twitter feed, status.net stream or a hash tag for people to message at should be able to be integrated into your chosen blog easily.

Code updates

If you want people to be able to download, use, alter and potentially improve your code and you haven’t already then we recommend getting into an online code repository. This also comes with the benefit of your code being stored in the cloud and therefore safe from laptop failures.

The most popular is probably github.com but if you’re familiar with version control systems other than git there are google code (with gives you Subversion, Mercurial AND git) and bitbucket (which gives you git and Mercurial).

So what does this mean for drumbeat?

We feel that drumbeat has been a huge success, the projects that it has made, the community that it has created and the people that it has put as into contact with. In 2012 we’re so excited to see how this community can help us more forward and make the next generation of web makers. You can read more about our our future plans over at http://openmatt.wordpress.com/2012/02/16/byebyedrumbeat/

We will also be blogging more about where we will be taking the Mozilla Foundation online presence. We’ll be doing it in iterations and in the open so feedback is always welcome. Keep your eyes posted on our RSS feeds for further information.

If that’s already got you wanting to apply then please have a read of the job spec and get your application in – http://careers.mozilla.org/en-US/position/oIkXVfwE. If you’re looking for more information please read on…

What will I be working on?

Short answer – lots!

Detailed answer – just this week we’ve launched a the new Knight-Mozilla Open News partnership. The site right now is pretty basic and there are tons of improvements that need to be made. We want to do something around our events platform, including getting an events platform; you can read more about that through the thoughts of Ben Simon on the infrastructure of self-organising and Michelle Thorne on potential feature requests for web makers (trying to crowd source what things we might initially need). Mozilla are running a partnership with the National Science Foundation, Geni, Ignite and the White House called Mozilla Ignite so there is work to be done on that site as we build out the feature set there. Then there is the Mozilla Festival… So yeah, we’ll make sure you don’t get bored.

“Team Ross” as it currently stands (or sits) – come make it a proper team!

Of course all of your work will happen in the open – your code will be on github, our dev servers will have public access as will our bug tracking systems and wikis. I’ve found this a really exciting part of the job so far and it’s certainly not as scarey as you think it might be – people when commenting on your code are helping you make it better and there is a global knowledge base to tap into.

What technology will I be using?

Mozilla are a web company so everything will be based around HTML5. Server side we’ve got projects running on Django (using Mozilla Playdoh), nodejs and wordpress. We’re not tied to one technology and decide on a project by project basis what is the best fit in terms of what’s most useful for the client and can produce the best experience for our end users.

Where can I work from?

Mozilla have, or soon will have offices in 9 locations worldwide but also are very open to remote working. So where ever you are reading this from if you think you’re a good fit then please apply!. London will have it’s office opening in the next month or so, I’ve been in, it’s looking great and has a good location in Covent Garden; it will also come with it’s own bar!

So where do I apply?

As mentioned above you can apply (don’t forget to include a github/bitbucket/googlecode URL) at http://careers.mozilla.org/en-US/position/oIkXVfwE

Any further questions then please ask in the comments.