Update 9/20/12: you can see the photos from our very successful graduation here
In the spirit of innovation that marks Mozilla, we launched WebFWD last year as an experiment. The main question we needed to answer was whether we can offer help to open companies that want to grow. Real, valuable help.
To answer that, we lean heavily on the success of our teams as one of our most important metrics; without them, we’re nothing. Below is a summary of some stellar things our teams have done over the past several months working with us (and others). We hope you can hear them elaborate on these accomplishments at their graduation this Wednesday, September 19th either live or via live stream!
BigBlueButton
Shipped built-in Record and Playback features
Localized in over 35 languages
Reached 61,000 installs over the past 12 months
Increased developer activity: Over 500 forks of our project on GitHub
Shipped updated integrations of BigBlueButton with latest versions of Moodle and Sakai for universities and colleges
buddycloud
Ran on 48 different domains
Supported 55 developers contributing to the project
Attracted 1,200 highly motivated beta testers and advocates
Initiated trials with BMW, BrightRoll and Mozilla
CASH Music
Released four versions of the distributed version of their platform, and made significant headway into hosted version (target release date end of October 2012)
Raised $60,000+ via Kickstarter (over twice the initial goal)
Featured in many publications including the NY Times, MTV, Performer Magazine, Hypebot and Digital Trends.
Spoke on industry panels at SF Music Tech Summit, Bandwidth 2x, XOXO, Portland Digital eXp/MFNW, and South by Southwest.
Built up a membership of nearly 200 artists, independent labels, managers, and publicists to help guide platform development and new educational component of the organization.
Entropy Wave
Developed broadcast-quality hardware and cloud-based encoder systems which fully support open source as well as proprietary video codecs and transmit HD-quality video to mobile, tablet, and desktop viewers.
Became the first company to provide consumer device-level live streaming in WebM, an open-source video codec sponsored by Google and supported by a large developer community.
Fully integrated product line with the Matterhorn/Opencast project, an entirely open-source lecture capture application currently in use by top universities around the world including Harvard, UC Berkeley, and the University of Manchester.
Created and maintain an entirely open-source cloud-based Streaming Server application which allows users to scale video to a limitless number of viewers on the web, tablet, and mobile device. This application is currently being tested by several universities.
IHeartCode
Hosted a Hackathon at IIT Delhi attracting over 280 people, where we shared about Mozilla Persona and Open Badges. A few interesting hacks also emerged, including a PHP-based app to build and host online quizzes; and Twt, a hashtag generator.
Completed a code base rewrite in coffee script.
Attained 230 signups to preview IHeartCode.
Began building university contributor community at 3 different schools.
Open Photo
Raised $25,000 on Kickstarter
Launched a hosted version
Launched iPhone app
Attracted 50+ contributors, 1000+ watchers, 200+ feature requests on Github.
Received $362,000 in funding from the Shuttleworth Foundation
Obtained press coverage from TechCrunch, The Next Web, ReadWriteWeb, The Atlantic, The Verge, Tech Cocktail and more.
Synbiota
Shipped GENtle Beta, an Open-Source, web-based DNA design app already used by iGEM teams, DIYBio groups and some of the world’s biggest DNA Synthesis companies.
Acquired over 100 users on its biotech crowd innovation platform, of which 40% have submitted credit card information.
Launched SPrize competition, a contest similar to XPrize, to accelerate the development of Open Source plug-ins for GENtle.
Invited to special meetings with DARPA, FBI & DOD.
Accepted to Impact Engine social enterprise incubator.
Partnered with Genomikon to host/sell DNA kits (think “Arduino for Biology”).
Garnered interest from outside the Biotech realm - including School of Design at UPenn.
Incorporated in Delaware.
Tomahawk
Attained over 300,000 downloads to date (nearly double from beginning WebFWD program).
Heralded as “a force to be reckoned with” (The Next Web), “incredibly revolutionary” (MakeUseOf), “mind-blowing” (Wired) and “the most important music app no one is talking about” (evolver.fm).
Began active development of web app (http://toma.hk) user community and mobile apps.
Gained support by over 40 technical contributors globally.
