beginnings

numen (n(y)oo’-men) n. a spiritual force or influence often identified with a natural object, phenomenon or locality (pl. numina)

So this is the part of the blog where I tell you who I am.

I’m the father of a de-lovely two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, and the husband of a gifted artist. I live in Oakland, California, home to (in no particular order) Jack London, Angela Davis, Children’s Fairyland, Ishmael Reed, Lake Merritt, MC Hammer and Del tha Funkee Homosapien.

I’m the new director of product marketing for Mozilla Corporation, and I am damned happy to be here.

It’s a dream job for me, and it’s going to be an adventure spreading the word about who Mozilla is and why what we do matters.

I’ve worked in technology for most of my career. My first job after college was as an interactive scriptwriter and associate product manager at Spectrum HoloByte, where we made computer games based on Star Trek: The Next Generation.

I left Spectrum after several years to work for the Milarepa Fund. Milarepa was hosting the first Tibetan Freedom Concert in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco. I remember the guys from Sonicnet set up a live webcast from the shows, although how they managed to pull that off in 1996, in the middle of the park, still boggles me. It was a beautiful two days in every sense. Greets to the M. crew if you are reading this now in 2005.

After helping to start up a television advertising company, I worked for two years as an independent web producer. Then it was off to business school, and product marketing at Adobe Systems, where I launched PageMaker, InDesign CS PageMaker Edition and Creative Suite 2.

Which brings us to today.

My intent is to use this blog to promote Mozilla’s mission, and to demystify how we make our marketing decisions. I read a number of marketing blogs, and I’m struck by how much is presumed about the level of inside knowledge a reader already has about the practice of marketing. I’ll try as much as I’m able to share what I’ve learned over the past several years of school and work when I post about things we’re doing.

I’m glad to be here as part of the Mozilla community.