The man behind SpreadFirefox.com told Murdok the story of the Firefox Crop Circle, and how a bunch of students pulled off a memorable feat through hard work, persistence, and a nudge from Lady Luck.
Firefox has had that effect on Microsoft, as the Mozilla Foundation’s competing browser has gained a double digit market share around the world, and inspired loyalty from users weary of ActiveX exploits that hammer millions of Internet Explorer installations.
That inspired loyalty really took form when a couple of adept video creators accepted an invitation from Asa Dotzler, co-founder and community coordinator for SpreadFirefox.com, to intern with Mozilla and work on its Firefox Flicks project.
Those interns, Matt Schickman and John Carey, had an epiphany during an airplane ride. They were brainstorming on ways to promote Firefox in a novel way when the solution hit them – make a crop circle.
The project came together during the 2006 OSCon, O’Reilly Publishing’s open source conference. Matt and John were asking passersby at the conference if they happened to know anyplace where they could use the land to make the crop circle.
One of the people who wandered by and was questioned about land happened to be Tim O’Reilly. Dotzler said O’Reilly blogged about the idea, and that led to greater interest.
Next the interns ran into members of Oregon State University’s Linux User Group, also on hand for OSCon. Since they were part of a group that had worked on other Firefox promotions, they were naturally enthusiastic about the idea.
We need to digress for a moment and talk about the essential component of the crop circle, namely the crop. In this case it’s oats, and their growth represented an obstacle to the aspiring crop circlers.
If it took too long to find suitable land, the oats would grow too high and lean over from their weight, which would make creating a distinctive circle difficult if not impossible. Harvesting schedules needed to be considered as well.
Fortunately they found a farmer willing to donate an acre of land for the cause; Dotzler noted the farmer and his wife were Firefox users, a serendipitous footnote to the effort. They set to work.
Their efforts can be seen on Google Maps now, as yet another fortuitous encounter took place with some folks from Google’s open source team. Being Firefox fans, they worked to get the crop circle on Google Maps and Google Earth.
“That’s one of the advantages of having really passionate users,” Dotzler said.
The passion will be visible to even more people. The Firefox Flicks project will hit television, with a test run of four spots created for the project, accompanied by sponsorships. Those spots and their associated sponsors have been chosen to run on selected cable channels in Boston and San Francisco, with Spot Runner handling their placement during the holidays.
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David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.
