Elections May 2015 - Nominee Q&A

[pierros (Pierros Papadeas)]

Hey all, in this post the 8 nominees should post their answers to the following questions:

1. What are the top three issues that you would want the Council to address were you to join the Council?
2. What is in your view the Mozilla Reps program’s biggest strength and weakness?
3. Identify something that is currently not working well in the Mozilla Reps program and which you think could be easy to fix?
4. What past achievement as a Rep or Mentor are you most proud of?
5. What are the specific qualities and skills that you have that you think will help you be an effective Council member?
6. As a Mentor, what do you do to try to encourage your inactive Mentees to be active again?

[bkerensa (Benjamin Kerensa)]

1:

• Transparency - While some improvements to council transparency have been made I believe there is still a lot of work to be done here.
• Conformity - After speaking with Reps, Mentors and Former Council Members it is clear to me that the program can be made more equitable. Where decisions are made they can be done so with some degree of conformity. If elected I would like to work on bring more conformity to decision making so reps could expect consistent outcomes on votes surrounding their budgets.
• Engagement - In talking with Reps, Mentors and Former Council one thing I heard that was a recurring theme was that Reps, Mentors etc feel like they are getting communication from council but that their is a lack of engagement in that the communication is one way and not real discussions to learn the needs and issues of the communities council represents. If elected I would regularly hold calls with every region we have a rep in and encourage my fellow council members to do the same.

2:
I feel the biggest strength we have is a diverse community of volunteers (reps) who are passionate about Mozilla’s mission and values. The biggest weakness I feel the reps program faces is a lack of engagement with reps by the council.

3:
Council meetings are done in the private and could be easily opened up to be viewed by any reps or mentor. This is an easy fix and I have suggested this in the past but rather than do it excuses have always been made to keep these meetings private.

4:
I’m most proud of being able to go to Summit 2013 because I was able to deeply engage with reps from every country.

5:
I have served multiple terms on governance boards for the Ubuntu project and in my daily life I serve as director for a non-profit / public body which I have been re-elected to now for a second term. As a result of my experience as a director I have received training on every aspect of best practice for small boards and governance bodies.

I would like to close these answers by also sharing that I have the endorsement of the following individuals as a candidate: Wissam Alazzam (Rep Mentor), Rami Khader (Rep Mentor / Former Council), Viking Karwur (Former Council), Sayak Sarkar (Former Council)

Oh and I have a nice shiny campaign logo too:

[migdadi]

"What are the top three issues that you would want the Council to address were you to join the Council?"

Wiki: finding information using the wiki is so hard, I am using search engines to search for information.

FSA: Firefox student Ambassadors,RAL’s program needs some enhancements, i believe RAL’s need to be more visible to FSA’s, FSA and clubs at every university gonna insure us a new generation of contributors.

also we need to provide every club with at least 1 Firefox OS mobile.

Budget Requests: I am getting a lot of requests and questions about Budget requests. It takes more than it should take, lets put the reasons of these delays behind our backs for the moment, these delays led to ruining Reps and communities Schedule and Plans, and could case loosing Reps and FSA’s trust.

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"What is in your view the Mozilla Reps program’s biggest strength and weakness? "

Biggest strength:
1-Nice program management, Reps are so engagement in decision making, they can change.
2-So active Reps Mailing list, a lot of great ideas and suggestions being submitted to the mailing list.

Weakness : Lack of communication between Reps and FSA’s, understanding that Reps program it doesn’t mean that it’s managerial position, in fact it’s just for organizing things.

Accepting Reps even if they are living at the same place, while a lot of places needs Reps, distributing Reps all over the country on different cities on my point of view better, so FSA’s could easily find help.

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"Identify something that is currently not working well in the Mozilla Reps program and which you think could be easy to fix?"

Certification that proof’s that Reps is a real Reps and do represent Mozilla.

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"What past achievement as a Rep or Mentor are you most proud of?"

Being chosen as a Rep of the month still means a lot to me until this moment. (March 2014)

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"What are the specific qualities and skills that you have that you think will help you be an effective Council member?"

I am so involved in Mozilla projects, I started from the bottom, which gave me experience as FSA and Rep to Reps Mentor, as a result I feel that I can act as an FSA, Rep.

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"As a Mentor, what do you do to try to encourage your inactive Mentees to be active again?"

Give them ideas, Calls, Recognition, deal with them as a friend, hear from them there ideas, and motivating them.

I am so Proud of Stefan Costen and Syed Towaha, they are so active and creative.

[shahidfarooqui (Shahid Ali Farooqui)]

1. What are the top three issues that you would want the Council to address were you to join the Council?

Here is top three issues that I want council to address.

(i) Simplified and transparent budget process: Many Reps are not happy with the existing budget approval process. I think we need to further discuss and find the ways for simplified and transparent budget process.

(ii) Periodic training for Reps: Mozilla Reps are the face of Mozilla in their region to empower and support volunteer Mozillians. Time to time we need to train and update them on various Mozilla projects and products. We should help and encourage them to improve their community building skills. We all should help and respect each other.

(iii) Bridging Council, Mentors and Reps: After having conversation with several Reps, I came to know that, many Reps feel themselves isolated in the community. We need to find ways to bridge council, mentors and reps in a better way in order to ensure engagement of more and more community members and to get better outcome of the Reps program.

2 . What is in your view the Mozilla Reps program’s biggest strength and weakness?

Biggest Strength

Mozilla Reps program’s biggest strength is such a big and organized community spread across the world. I found, Mozilla Reps is the most active FOSS community in the world, and this is because of awesome reps

Biggest Weakness

Mozilla Reps program’s biggest weakness is ‘huge communication gap’ between the council and Mentors/Reps due to the different language, timezone, geographic, culture etc.

3.Identify something that is currently not working well in the Mozilla Reps program and which you think could be easy to fix?

In my opinion, currently ‘Rep recognition’ system is not working well in Mozilla Reps Program.

Potential and deserving Reps/contributors are not getting proper recognition for their long time contributions. Because of this, few Reps/contributors are stepping back. There is need to identify such Reps/contributors, give them recognition and invite them to take active participation in growing
the program and the community.

4. What past achievement as a Rep or Mentor are you most proud of?

As a Rep, I am proud to help in building community in Allahabad, Durgapur, Dhanbad, Kolkata
etc. While helping and building community, I am proud to identify many faces who are now Mentor, Reps, Mozillaians and doing an outstanding contribution for the community. I am proud to get invite for Summit 2013, MozCamp Asia 2012, Mozilla India Community meetup, Mozilla India
Taskforce Meetup and many more.

As a Mentor, I am proud to identify and recruit awesome Reps who are now doing a great contribution for the community in their region as well as in their domain.
I always feel proud whenever I get chance to help not only my mentees but to any Rep or Mozillian. Again, I am proud to get intive for ReMo Camp Berlin, 2014.

5. What are the specific qualities and skills that you have that you think will help you be an effective Council member?

I am part of academic community for more than ten years. I have very vast experience of various
teaching/learning methodology/models. I am member of various committees in my profession. I do use and support FOSS system and I am very much into various FOSS communities. In addition to this, I am a community builder and a good listener too . These credentials and skills will help me to be an effective Council member.

6. As a Mentor, what do you do to try to encourage your inactive Mentees to be active again?

First of all, most of my mentees are super duper active since the time they have joined as Rep. But still 1 or 2 mentees are not that active as others. I use to ping them and try to understand the reasons behind their in-activeness. The best way is to stand and try to help them in their problems. I always encourage and motivate my mentees which creates inertia to activate them.

[rara (Irayani Queencyputri (Rara))]

What are the top three issues that you would want the Council to address were you to join the Council?

• Empowerment. I have seen a lot of awesome things happened in the past year. The past Council has done so many things to tackle various issues in community. I want to make sure that the flame did not goes out with the present Council’s departure. Especially in my region (Asia), often times, I can’t help but feeling that the distance between what happened in the North America and Europe were widened. I want to empower community in different parts of Asia, especially East and South East Asia to have more initiatives that will benefit members of the community and strengthen Mozilla presence in these region.
• Leadership. Mozilla Reps are leader in their own community. It is important to make sure that every Reps in Mozilla feels enabled and empowered. I believe that this can be achieved through setting examples and to lead with their existing skill sets. I want to encourage fellow Mozilla Reps to maximize their potentials and using it to work together with contributors in strengthening their community.
• Swag. At the moment, we wasted so much resources to send swags from the storage to various events. To have a t-shirt made with very low cost and sending it to storage with unbelievably high shipping expense. And then ship it again to the event. Almost always, the shipping cost is at least 5 times the production cost. Even worse, if there is a problem with local custom. The shipment could be stalled and even re-send back to Mozilla, all with amazing amount of money for shipping. I want to provide alternatives for having swags produced and shipped more effectively.

What is in your view the Mozilla Reps program’s biggest strength and weakness?

Mozilla Reps program’s biggest strength:
Mozilla is an example on how we can build and managing community. I believe that its power is coming from contributors and volunteers and all Mozillians around the world.

Mozilla Reps program’s biggest weakness:
The growing number of Mozillian and the community is much bigger than the available resources, especially the number of existing (and active) Reps.

Identify something that is currently not working well in the Mozilla Reps program and which you think could be easy to fix

• Bugzilla responses are quite often too slow. It is one of the things that I believe can be managed quite easily with regular schedule and reminders.
• There are too many communication channel and tools we are using at the moment, and many of which are not being used by everyone. It seems that whenever someone find a tools that they think useful, then he or she will open a new channel of communication. It happens over and over again. I still think that the best tool available at the moment is mailing list, more than discourse or telegram. It has no member limitations, characters, and it stays forever. We can trace back and re-read whatever we had written ages ago using this tool easily.

What past achievement as a Rep or Mentor are you most proud of?

As a Rep, I was featured as the Rep of the Month in June 2012. And as a Rep also, since 2011, I am helping building the community, encouraging people in Indonesia to join Mozilla projects, even if I have to go the east side of Indonesia. Doing workshops, give talk in seminars, etc. Invited to MozCamp Asia 2011 and 2010, Mozilla Summit 2013, being invited to the All Hands, to Mozilla Work Week are the best times of my Rep life. I learn so much from Mozilla.
As a mentor, I am proud of my mentees, especially in the past year, they have been very active and inspiring more than ever. Almost every month they have some great events. Some are big events, some are just small events. We had some regular webmaker training monthly, also tried to implement the Lo-fi No-Fi Maker Party in the park.
Seeing my mentees grow and inspire other Mozillians is a happiness for me as a mentor

What are the specific qualities and skills that you have that you think will help you be an effective Council member?

• Community building and community engagement more than 8 years
• Posses a broad network from past entanglement with various communities, organizations and events

As a Mentor, what do you do to try to encourage your inactive Mentees to be active again?

I will approach my mentee personally and ask him/her the reason of him/her being inactive. Ask him/her whether there are any obstacles he/she faces in doing activities as Mozilla Reps. I will offer help if there’s any and will provide any inputs or suggestions needed.
When all of those do not work, I will give the said mentee an opportunity to temporarily leave the program to solve his/her problem. Of course, the mentee will have the opportunity to be active again in Mozilla Reps program whenever he/she becomes ready again.

Thank you for your time to read this post

I am all ears for questions and suggestions. You can reach me via my social networks 24 hours a day.
Twitter : @rara79, email rara79 (at) gmail (dot) com, and also you can reach me at telegram (username @rara79)

I am also opening office hours for chat and discussions. You can request a time through http://doodle.com/rara79

[mkohler (Michael Kohler)]

What are the top three issues that you would want the Council to address were you to join the Council?

• Transparency: The current council has done a lot of work regarding transparency, but it’s not totally open yet. We need to identify all points that are not open and timely communicated. There certainly are things we can’t do in the open (conflict resolution for example), therefore we need to identify everything and adjust the internal processes to make sure that everything that can be open, is communicated openly.
• Impact: As our community grows Reps are an important part of impact. We do not only promote Mozilla in our countries but also help interested people to contribute to Mozilla. Therefore we need to have all the necessary information from teams within Mozilla so we can align our goals and plans our engagement with Mozilla’s top goals (which AFAIK are not publicly accessible for 2015, please correct me if that has changed in the last weeks). As with transparancy council has already started on working with teams within Mozilla to tell them how much Reps could help them out. We need to continue this effort and in my opinion Reps are the best resource to inspire new contributors to work on Mozilla’s goals.
• Recognition/Education: as Reps we do not only want to get recognized for our work, but also need to recognize our local communities for their work. I’d like to help out together with the Participation team to work on efforts to make recognition easier, in whatever form recognition might come.

What is in your view the Mozilla Reps program’s biggest strength and weakness?

Biggest strength: All of us. Every single Rep does great work and can do a lot for Mozilla to increase our overall impact. Everybody is helpful and tries the best to also help out other Reps if somebody has a problem. We’re international and active in almost all countries of the world.

Biggest weakness: There are a lot of “inactive” Reps who haven’t filed a report for the past 8 weeks. In numbers: 235 out of 448 (that’s 52,5%). I think we need to identify why this is the case. Is it real “inactivity”? Is it the reporting? (Source: KPI dashboard, this dashboard is still in testing, so that might be a bug, but I don’t think so)

Identify something that is currently not working well in the Mozilla Reps program and which you think could be easy to fix?

Transparency. The current council has done a lot of great work regarding this already and I think there is not much needed now for being more open to all the Reps. The next step would be to identify points that can’t be open (conflict resolution content, …) and make sure that everything else is in the open.

What past achievement as a Rep or Mentor are you most proud of?

As a Rep, the achievement I’m most proud of is the German-speaking Community and it’s last 2 years. I started in the Swiss community and came to know about the overall German-speaking Community. Together with other Reps we started to have regular meetups to evaluate the current status and set goals for the next year. Currently this format works out very well.

As a mentor, my proudest achievement probably is my responsiveness. I’ve managed to answer questions of my mentees and review Reps related bugs within 24 hours.

What are the specific qualities and skills that you have that you think will help you be an effective Council member?

Being a Rep since 2012 I know the processes and know where it might get tricky to engage as well as one would like. I gained a lot of experience in giving valuable Feedback and conflict resolution. Further I have a fair amount of project management skills to make sure that ideas get from ideas to implementation.

For the past 2 years I met a lot of other Reps and got to know how they work and what problems they run into. I also got to value different cultures.

As a Mentor, what do you do to try to encourage your inactive Mentees to be active again?

First of all I get in touch with the inactive Mentee to get to know why they’re inactive. Here are some questions I ask:

• Is there anything you’re blocked on? Time? Is there anything you need to know/get advice on, so that you can be active again?
• Do you like being a Community Builder? Is there anything I can help you with to make your engagement easier?
• Is there anything within the Reps program that needs to be changed? Are you happy with the Reps program?

These questions mostly get to the bottom of the problem. Once I have the answers to tese questions we can worked together to fix problems and get my inactive Mentee back on track so they have impact again.

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Elio Qoshi surprised me with the following poster/flyer, it would be wrong to not share this amazing masterpiece

[Christos (Christos Bacharakis)]

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.

[faisalaziz4ever (Faisal Aziz)]

1. What are the top three issues that you would want the Council to address were you to join the Council?

Visibility & Transparency :
Current council has done splendid job by bringing more transparent approach in overall process and decision making, However, We are still on the way to improve it, and I’d like to maintain ongoing efforts to bring transparency especially with participant selections in various major events worldwide with strong and reasonable matrices.
·
Participation:
I find weekly calls are great for engagements; I’d like to bring our heroes on stage who works behind the scenes. I have seen many contributors who are filled with great ideas for program improvement however; they don’t express or participate on such calls or platforms due to communication, time-zones, or maybe they feel shy to put their ideas on board. I’d like to motivate them for participation by eliminating their challenges and hurdles.

Grievances :
Mozilla community is scaling day by day, the more we grow, and the more will be chances of grievances. Council plays an important role in maintaining a healthy environment for mozillians by addressing issues and by providing prompt resolutions in community. I’d like make grievances and conflict resolution more satisfactory by bringing an efficient conflict resolution framework.

2.What is in your view the Mozilla Reps program’s biggest strength and weakness?

Biggest Strength:
In my opinion the biggest strength of Mozilla Reps program is a global network of awesome reps from various cultures & geography, sharing a common vision with a sense of true leadership. No doubt it is one of the biggest platform, which provides an opportunity to grow ourselves. A platform which empowers us to learn, collaborate and grow ourselves as leaders.

Biggest Weakness:
I thing we are struggling with a unified communication channel to convey the information to everyone. We have so many channels to communicate which sometime left people unaware of important announcements. We need to work hard on this to bring community on a common platform.

3.Identify something that is currently not working well in the Mozilla Reps program and which you think could be easy to fix?

Bugzilla:
I found bugzilla turn around times are major concerns among reps with budget and swags. Since, a budget or swag request needs to go through different stages it takes time. I got certain ideas from developers suggesting automatons which may help reducing these turn-around times and make life easy for everyone.

Swags: Its getting too hard for reps to get swags on time in the regions like ASIA and regions far from US moreover shipping cost is too high to send these swags to countries far away from US . We have seen loss of expensive swags in hands of custom and shippings. I personally believe we can overcome this by producing local swags and by creating a system to manage these local swag inventories.

4.What past achievement as a Rep or Mentor are you most proud of?
As a Rep,

• I have been deeply involved with community building activities in several regions of
  India. I was part of community initiatives for Bhopal, Indore, Mumbai, Warangal
  and other places across India.
• Featured as Rep of the month for Mar 2015 for my efforts to unite sub-communities under one roof in central India
• I am a core localizer & language maintainer for Ur Locale working with Indian & Pakistan community.·
• I was part of Webmaker training days,Athens, Moz-Camp Asia 2012 & Mozilla Summit 2013.
• In India, after my each event so far,got good number sustainable contributors, a majority of them are now serving community as rep and as mentor.

As a mentor,
I have taken many initiatives to bring sub communities under one roof for better collaboration. I actively manage engagements between local and international communities.

5.What are the specific qualities and skills that you have that you think will help you be an effective Council member?

• I have been in program from its initial days,I am aware of the transitions that took place in these past years.
• I feel fortunate that I got many opportunities to meet with people across the globe, I am in touch with different cross-culture communities worldwide, helping them to grow their communities.
• I am part of different task forces in India, helping local reps with governance and leadership.
• Helping reps and sub-communities with conflict resolutions and sharing best practices of community building.

6.As a Mentor, what do you do to try to encourage your inactive Mentees to be active again?

• Regular Follow-ups with mentee to understand reason why they turned inactive.
• Identify Challenges/hurdles they are facing with program.
• I’ll try to find quick solution that motivates them to active again.
• If things not working, I’ll advise them to
  take a temporary break from program and return once they feel refreshed.

Feedbacks and suggestions are most welcome! Feel free to drop me an email at faisalaziz4ever@gmail.com Twitter @faisalazizindia