I cannot agree more, with Daniele. Along the years I have seen a lot of Mozillians come in and move out. I have had this discussion online with a lot of people, and offline too, and only last month I proposed a recognition structure to Kiki and discussed it with her as well, while I was told that it will passed to the Reps Council. But again, I had to do all of it because of the lack of gratification or even recognition from Mozilla for the Contributors.
I work closely with Campus Clubs, and for an upcoming dev to see that his peers who are GitHub Campus Experts are getting a Hoodie, a Tee, a Bag, a Flag, and stickers in a welcome pack is huge. I remember the Campus Club Lead of my college getting a Firefox T-shirt and since then, I got my first t-shirt from Mozilla, over a year later. Until then, I had no clue, what could I do to get one. I got my first Firefox Tee last year, right before MozFest 2018.
I am not one to stop because of the lack of recognition. Then again, this is what makes a Volunteer do more, it inspires them, a lot of them started with me but never really made . Even now, I maintain mozilla/OpenDesign as a Collaborator and have made a few design for the issues there, and have been an active Contributor for Mozilla India Social Media designs as well, but there was never really any recognition, and we didn’t really keep waiting for any.
I was the First Mozillian of the Month and after winning, I proposed a a Recognition Structure I had mentioned above because I couldn’t justify it in my own head that how would compare an A-Frame Contributor with a Design Contributor or a Friend of Add-On, and even if it is, how do you justify the Quality Contribution vs the Quantity they’re contributing with. It just seemed a bit unfair to me.
While Mozilla does have an understanding of it’s various communities, we expect for them to sort this out for us, or look for solutions through the community already. We want new volunteers ti flourish and get recognized, and we want them to move up the ladder.
Then again, I feel the gravity of this statement in my heart and I know that a lot of people would agree with this:
Which is why, we are here, to discuss and sort it out. I hope more people reply to this, and we get heard.
This post has about 400 views, and we need everyone’s opinion on this so that we can improve what we have.
Thank you for starting this post, Daniele. I hope this will make a positive difference in the Community.