• Your Vision Drives Your Project
• Assignment: Write Your Vision or Mission Statement

Your Vision Drives Your Project

Before you jump into section 2, on Opening Your Project, take a few minutes to state your vision for your project and community going forward. Your vision is what powers your project and excites and attracts contributors. It’s important to be able to say what you plan to do, clearly and concisely, in a short form, to anyone, on a moment’s notice! The process of choosing these words may also help you think through and refine your project idea and goals. This is a great exercise to do with a small group of community members or contributors if available, to ensure that everyone has a shared understanding of the project.

Articulate your big idea, vision or dream that you want to achieve by working open, and experiment with expressing your vision in a short format.

Take a few minutes to state your vision for your project and community going forward. It’s important to be able to say what you plan to do, clearly and concisely, in a short form, to anyone, on a moment’s notice! t.

Assignment: Write Your Vision or Mission Statement

1. Brainstorm answers to these questions to help you craft your vision statement.
   • Who you’re working with, or hope to work with
   • What you’re doing
   • Who you’re doing it for, your audience (may be same as the previous question)
   • Why you’re doing this, the impact or change you hope to make

2. Put your answers together in a short statement

   Incorporating your responses, write your vision or mission statement in a short, simple format. Feel free to tweak the format. Color coding is added here for clarity, to indicate each key piece of information and where it appears in the statement:

   I’m working with [community, allies, contributors] to [make, build, teach, or do something] so that [audience, end users, consumers, community members] can [do something different, achieve a goal]

   Sample Statement:

   I’m working with public school teachers in Boston to teach computational thinking and creative coding skills to public school students so that they can use and create with technology to actively shape their own futures.

   Tips for writing your vision statement:

   • Use clear concise language– see if you can get your statement down to a single, powerful sentence
   • Use cause and effect language– verbs that express both what you’ll do, and what your users or community members will do differently when your vision is realized.

3. Add a second part to your vision statement– thinking back on the benefits/challenges of working open that you reflected on in module 1.2, add a sentence that expresses why you want to work openly: “I’m working open because…”

4. If you’d like, share this vision statement with the Mozilla’s network of leaders by sharing it on Mozilla’s Network Pulse. Browse the inspiring and energizing statements that others have shared there. Do you see any opportunities for connection or collaboration or resource sharing between projects?

Your project, and your vision for it, will be the basis for all the work you do in this series; you may find you need to return to it for clarity and inspiration when you get lost in the details or encounter stumbling blocks. You might discover you need to tweak your vision as your project evolves. Revisit your vision statement often, and get in the habit of using it when you talk to newcomers to your project.

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