What are the top three issues that you would want the Council to address were you to join the Council?
Feedback/Communication
First of all I would like to work with the rest of the council members on a communication channel that will help us fill the communication gap between the council and the Reps. This will also help in bringing more transparency in the council’s work and as a result we will able to gather more feedback in order to determine our next steps as a council and as a program.
Engage/empower
Reps is one of the most active community of volunteers within Mozilla.
However there is an important number of Reps who are currently inactive and we need to see the issues and try to fix the bottlenecks. We have to identify all the contribution opportunities and projects within Mozilla and communicate them back to the Reps across the world. This will help us to engage inactive Reps and empower active ones by providing them more opportunities.
Recognition
Recognizing all the hard and stellar work of the Reps is a step towards success. The reps most of the times are identified as leaders and mentors in their communities. Recognizing their hard work can bring participation and success back to the project since they will eventually engage and mentor more contributors
What is in your view the Mozilla Reps program’s biggest strength and weakness?
The biggest strength of the Reps program is its people. People from different countries with different cultures who share the same passion and join their efforts under one mission. Have you seen more passionate people than Mozilla Reps? I personally haven’t!
The biggest weakness, I believe, is the lack of communication between the Reps and leadership bodies, such as the mentors and the council. We have to work more on that and build a stronger bridge of communication between these parties.
Identify something that is currently not working well in the Mozilla Reps program and which you think could be easy to fix?
Some time ago we decided to keep the reps-general mailing list as an announcement list and empower Reps to use discourse for discussions. However this didn’t turn the way we wanted since untill today discourse Reps thread has low traffic. We have to empower more Reps to join the conversations in discourse because eventually it will empower local communities and it will be a step toward better communication.
What past achievement as a Rep or Mentor are you most proud of?
There are many things that I’m proud of, like being rep of the month and organising the presence of Mozilla Reps in Mozfest 2013. However, I couldn’t be more proud of empowering new people to do great thing within their local communities. All these years as a Webmaker super mentor and a Rep I have run a lot of workshops empowering people to learn new skills and technologies. Now I see them sharing their skills by mentoring newcomers. There is nothing else I could be more proud of.
What are the specific qualities and skills that you have that you think will help you be an effective Council member?
I consider myself a listener so I’m ready to listen and discuss any kind of feedback regarding the council and our Remo program. I am a man of action who loves to turn effective solutions, ideas and discussions into doable tasks. I am also very in tune with people around me, a skill that will help me to be an effective member of this council.
As a Mentor, what do you do to try to encourage your inactive Mentees to be active again?
First I would like to discuss with him/her and try to identify the reason for being inactive. Possibly something has changed on the way from the last time she/he was active. And when something changes, most of the times you need to adapt, especially if you want to continue on your contribution.
More over I would start over a discussion regarding contribution opportunities in Mozilla and we would work together on a new “plan” that would fit the Reps vision.