[IMPORTANT] Council Elections - H1 2020 - Nominee Q&A

Hey all,

This is the second step into the Election Process . In this thread the nominees should post their answers to the following questions . Nominees can additionally attach a very short video of themselves if they want to do so (please keep it under 2 minutes). Candidates have time until March 29th, 23:59 UTC . Note that this is mandatory.

  • What is, in your own view, the Mozilla Reps program’s biggest strength and weakness?
  • Identify something that is currently not working well in the Mozilla Reps program and which you think could be easy to fix. How would you approach a possible fix?
  • What are the top three issues you want the Council to address in case you get elected? Why? How would you approach these issues?
  • How do you believe you can support regional community health? - Can this be applied to Reps program too?
  • What are the specific qualities and skills that you have that you think will help you be an effective Council member?
  • Which of your contributions from the past 18 months had the biggest impact on the Reps program on a programmatic level?
  • Which past achievement as a Rep would you tell your best non-Mozilla friend about?

The list of nominees is:

Thanks in advance, looking forward to your answers!

9 Likes

Hello Everyone! :wave:

I’m Pranshu Khanna (@pransh15) from Surat, India. I’m a Mozilla Rep, and a Resource Rep and I have been a Mozillian for over 5 years now!

I’m a Community Ninja who loves to help people out and Mentor people towards their desired goals. I truly believe in Work Open Lead Open. I love building Communities! I’m very passionate for the Web, which stays with us in sickness and health. You can check my Reps Profile to know more!

  • Strength of the Program: Mozilla Reps are a set of diverse global leaders with different skills, abilities, backgrounds, experiences, and learning interests. Mozilla Reps are passionate contributors working towards a common mission that set of people is a huge strength for the Community.

  • Weakness of the Program: Mozilla Reps are not active as they should be. They have been given an awesome amount of power to go out and change the world but their inactivity becomes the fallen domino mid-way. Mozilla Reps are inherently enablers, our inactivity hurts the Community the most as we drift-off and end up not knowing what’s going on in our own communities. This hurts the ones who have been doing good work consistently, but fail to get any recognition for it. It’s very important to let the ball roll and nominate Mozillians for Mozillian of the Month or Rep of the Month. When rewarded, a Mozillian tends to work more and this motivates other Mozillians to work more. I think initiatives like Mission Driven Mozillians will bring new faces to the Community and also keep engaging the present Reps to be active.

  • Mentorship: I think Mentorship is an area where we can make massive strides with little effort. There are about 40-odd Mentors in this space and a lot of them are inactive which leads to no-oversight over the inactive Mozilla Reps who go on not being active in their communities and that leads to an overall halt from a whole region.

  • Communication - For any community to work and tackle issues and find new ideas and solutions, communication is key. I feel that there are a lot of Reps who do not join the Reps call very often, or even take a look at what’s happening in those calls. I hope this can be improved with the new platform coming next year and the newsletter is something which I would want to keep active. I would like to suggest more communication channels like how we recently acquired @mozillagram on Instagram. Such channels help Mozillians stay up to date, and using them as our Community channels would increase overall participation and would increase clarity over participation as well. There’s also Mission driven Mozillians, which can create incentives challenges for Mozillians to work on and increase participation.

  • Reporting: I think reporting from Reps hasn’t been at par. I take reporting seriously and I tend to update the portal with those. If we can create incentives on the Reports with links, that will help us recognize, appreciate and create more participation through the Reps program and if it works well - we can do that for Mozillians so that it helps Mission Driven Mozillians to showcase their work when need be.

  • Opportunity: I believe that the Reps program has given me a lot of opportunities to work on and build, but those opportunities have primarily been through ideas that I could brainstorm with my community and build on it. That could be true for a lot of people if we can create opportunities for Reps to work on crucial issues alongside Council members or Peers to understand what’s needed to build and sustain a Community as big as Mozilla’s. This is an example of what I’m talking about: Improve the Reps Program - Please help us by driving change!

This helps Reps to take initiative on projects which help the program but also for them to be recognized as leaders with great ideas for the community.

  • Communication: Even though we have groups on Matrix, Telegram and internal groups and whatnot - it’s important that we keep under one channel because we have a lot. I would work on a bot newsletter for the Community Portal which sends people the events added this week and the events which were done along with the blogs that were added for these events.

The most important part of our Regional Community is communication, and I make sure that each and every contest, activity, or campaign reaches each and every concerned person with a related skillset. That is something that I would like to focus on, and strive to create.

  • Inactivity: I believe that the inactivity throughout the Reps Program hurts it the most. I would work on improving the mentorship cycle and understand what’s needed to bring up new leaders in several regions where Reps have been inactive. An overhaul in the mentorship process could see more reporting and activities through each pillar(Rep) of the huge community we have and something I like to say to my community can come true, #TogetherWeCanDoMore.

Through the upcoming activities and campaigns, we will be able to work on this thoroughly and make sure that these activities reap the impact we require. This will linearize the structure where we can have the flexibility for Mozillians and Reps with the expected impact that we need. This will also give Mozilla the visibility it requires through more activity along with the presence I’ve mentioned under Communication.

One thing I love to do even when I have inactivity patches is taking regular meetings every month, or bi-weekly and sometimes every week. Going through contribution goals for each member in a single discourse helps the community to support each other, collaborate and grow together. This can be applied to the Reps Program too, through Reps Mentors we can help host this for Reps and through Reps we can help Mozillians to understand the Community structure and contribution areas better and give them an ideal plan for them to grow as a person and for the community to grow together.

This can be applied to the Mentors program as well through bi-weekly/monthly calls with Mentors and from Mentors(to their Mentees).

I believe that I have strong Leadership, Creative and Communication skills. All of these have helped me to give so much to the Community through creating projects, running campaigns, motivating people, mentoring so many people and speaking at events to so many people! I’m very active in the community and I believe in leading by example! I have a ton of experience in terms of trying technologies and making mistakes, and I tend to use those as my strengths for people to make more mistakes and learn more. I am a great listener, which is why I’ve been able to scrap out a lot of issues within my Regional Community and have been in talks with other sub-communities and helped them by giving ideas and taking calls with them to solve problems and grow together. I believe that my ideology around growing together along with my skills would help me be an effective Council member.

I’m a Resource Rep through which I have been able to enable Mozillians to obtain support for their events, and helped them design and organize their events better, and align them with Mozilla’s goals in a very constructive manner. As a Rep, I’ve been able to Mentor a lot of Mozillians in the community and helped them give direction to build and grow personally and up their skills to help the Community. I’ve been constantly helping Reps to work on Mozilla India website, Mozilla Gujarat’s website, social accounts, hackathons, giving talks, submitting CFPs, and much more.

Making Mozilla Gujarat this active! In my Mozilla Reps on-boarding I’d written that I’m going to work on cities and making Mozilla Gujarat an active community! I’m very happy to say that since I’ve become a Rep we have - 3 more Reps, over 200+ Mozillians, 20+ Events, 10+ Meetups, 50+ Zoom Calls and have gained impressions to to over 10,000 People through Social media, booth crawls, talks and whatnot. The mentee group I have, who call themselves MozFam, have spoken at over 82+ Events in the last 12 months and that, I believe, exemplifies what I’ve been able to accomplish as a Rep. To give you an idea, that is over a talk for every 4.5 days in the past year, and I still haven’t added my talks to this list! People who have met us at those talks, events, booth crawls have learnt something valuable about the internet since we believe in Mozilla’s mission and the vision of how the Web should be! We work tirelessly to make the Open Web better and how far we have come, and how we look to capitalize on it by making ideas come true is a true remark of my work ethic and instilling that in people around me is my biggest achievement!

Thank you for taking out your time to read my ideas. Feel free to reply on this post if you have any questions or feedback.

11 Likes

Hello Everyone :wave:

My name is Shina Dhingra (@shina_dhingra) and I’m from India. I’m a Mozilla Rep and have been a Mozillian for over 4 years now. I joined the community as a FSA and have made my moz-journey from learning, exploring, creating to teaching, helping and mentoring!
It’s been an amazing ride, trust me!

You can check out my reps profile here @shina_dhingra to learn more!

Thank you so much for giving your time to read my ideas. Please let me know if you have any feedback or suggestions in the comments below.

Cheers!

8 Likes

UPDATE: Link to my election video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3-chrGhSeI

Hi All, I am Ram Dayal Vaishnav, an active Mozillian for 8 years now. Part of Reps from from 6 years, also a Resources Rep & a featured Rep. Currently most obsessed with WebAssembly <3. I am first time contesting for Council program and eagerly looking forward to work on new ideas as council member. Following are my views, let me know if you have any questions.

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

Strength: Reps program is the oldest and most successful volunteer program. We have great SOPs, a system in place for everything (even an option to move to alumni). Strengths like this are keeping this program rocking as always giving opportunities to many volunteers across the globe.
Weakness: Inability to hold volunteers active for longer - Many people become inactive after a period, I believe we can do better here. The Reps Next (2.0) was a major makeover to the system, but as the time is passing we are seeing few things not working here, so we can fix them to make best out of the new system. Also we can improve recognitions among reps.

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

  • Reps not updated with Mozilla’s Goals all the time: Though our program has many activities and campaigns active to keep energy of reps aligned to Mozilla’s goals still not all reps are well update with what’s Mozilla’s current Goals. We should have a clear documentation of Mozilla’s goals & easily visible and accessible to Reps all the time. We can also get people more involved in our activities and campaigns to get them aligned to Mozilla’s goals.
  • Reps activeness: To keep people more motivated & engaged we can improve our recognition model further (though we have re-worked on it time to time).
  • Related to Reps Next: Reps Next was a major makeover to the program & have been working really great. However to make the best out of it we can review it again to find out quick fixes, e.g. in mentorship we can rethink hierarchy. We also need to review of all teams, set a minimum criteria for active members, filter out inactive members & recruit new members to meet minimum members count.

What are the top three issues you want the Council to address in case you get elected? Why? How would you approach these issues?

First of all I am quite satisfied with current OKRs & I would give my best to meet the key results for current objectives. In addition to them, I will prioritize following to mostly fix the same issues which I mentioned above.

  • Reps Next review: Lets make ‘the good’ ‘the better’. We can re-look at our teams & come up with best ways to identify current obstacles or anticipate upcoming challenges. These teams are new & this is relatively easy to make them work better at this stage to make them most effective.
  • Getting focus on Activities & Campaigns: Many reps are not well aligned with Mozilla’s current goals, to fix this we can get more focus of reps toward our activities & campaigns. We can use other recognition systems to attract Reps towards these campaigns & Mozilla aligned activities.
  • Effective use of Community portals & Matrix for effective communication and information sharing: We can be much more productive with these tools being used effectively by all the reps. This is very important because otherwise the communication is quite scattered which leads to reduced productivity. We can create more awareness around these tools and empower reps with these.

How do you believe you can support regional community health? - Can this be applied to Reps program too?

The Regional communities has proven to be the enter of Mozilla contributors, this is where we get new talent & they are very powerful when it comes to get the work done! Now that we have many resources in hands, I believe having good on boarding system and recognition system along with regular meet ups & activities are most important factors for healthy communities. There can be contests time to time based on Mozilla’s current priorities. We can support the communities by constantly feeding them with latest updates & resources to carry out these operations efficiently. Reps program can definitely learn from the successful regional community systems. Reps program can also have special recognition for special activities on Mozilla’s current goals.

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

  • Effective communication & coordination: Having good experience of leading teams at my workplace & having led many regional & tech communities I have got good interpersonal skills to communicate effectively & coordinate with multiple people.
  • Problem solving & implementation (including Documentation): I am good with problem solving process, starting from understanding & brainstorming the problem, discussing & finalizing on solution & getting it implemented well. This also involve good documentation & processes in place to to make it truly open so other anyone can contribute to it easily.

Which of your contributions from the past 18 months had the biggest impact on the Reps program on a programmatic level?

  • I have been an active Mozilla Rep, conducted various activities. I am also a Resource Rep & was also a featured Rep taking Reps program forward.
  • I have been very active in making Reps activities & campaign a success, I was mostly active in forming activities for Activate program, conducting events for campaigns with Tech Speakers program.
  • I have setup & nurtured various communities lately, including regional communities like Mozilla community in North East India & tech communities around WebVR & WebXR.
  • I have on-boarded & mentored several contributors to Mozilla recently. I have given several talks at conferences and events on international level & across India. This has also spread awareness about Reps program to many open source enthusiastic.

Which past achievement as a Rep would you tell your best non-Mozilla friend about?

I am really proud of building various communities (like Mozilla Rajasthan Community, Mozilla India WebVR etc) and taking them to next level. Also I tell my friend about the role I could play in taking the open source culture further through Reps program. My journey to get started with Mozilla (https://gurumukhi.wordpress.com/about-me/myself-as-mozillian/) & later really inspires the college students and other open source aspirants. Events conducted by me, activities & campaigns run by me, things I have learnt from Reps program, the network I have got through all this, the list keeps going when it comes to my achievements as a Rep.

I am really thankful to Reps program & proud to be a part of it. Now I would like your help to get an opportunity to take this program forward by being a part of the council.

Link to my election video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3-chrGhSeI

Thanks,
Ram

4 Likes

HI all,

I am Tim Maks van den Broek from Luzy, France. I am Dutch but live now in France. I join the Mozilla community in 2003, so i am a Mozillian for 17 years now and joined the Reps program in 2012.

I have done a lot of things inside mozilla, started as localizer, community builder, support etc. My main focus at this moment is Sumo and the onboarding of new reps

The biggest strength of the program is giving people access to resources . Reps are active mozillians who want to drive forward and helping other mozillians with their needs.

The biggest Weakness are the reps who are not active anymore and the idea from other mozillians that reps are a elite group.

The reps mentor function is something we really need to work on. The discussion is already started and i would really like to rethink how we proceed with this

  • onboarding, make the process clear for the applications and make sure that the reps who are reviewed get the guiding that the need to become a good rep.

  • mentorship, continue the discussion about how we see the mentors in the program

  • communication, streamline the communication inside the program. This is from reps to the council AND from the council to the reps. Make sure that everybody keeps aligned with the goals of Mozilla.

Make sure the local community is open to everybody and not focus around a small group who are not working with (or accepting ) new people. Make sure that the local community is aligned with the mission and the goals of mozilla. Also keep them posted about changes.
This is also important for the Reps .

I am a long time contributor :slight_smile: , i have a lot of experience in managing a group of poeple to get the best out of them.

I worked on (still working on) streamlining the onboarding process with result in a updated wikipage and a new onboarding form. Also the team is not behind anymore with the onboarding. A new rep has his/her answer in max 7 weeks after they apply.

All the people i helped with solving there problems with the internet.

2 Likes

Hello Everyone :pray:

I’m Bala Subramaniyan from Hyderabad, India. I’m associated with Mozilla over 8+ years and came across multiple positions.

Currently, I’m holding this positions: Mozilla Reps, Reps Onboarding Member, Reps Resource Member.

In the past, I worked as a VP of Club Development for FSA Executive Board and Regional Ambassador Lead for India community.

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

Strength:
We have hundreds of well-trained Reps plotted across the globe, who work together in achieving the goals of Mozilla mission and for community growth. Mozilla Reps is an innovative and best program for fulfilling the volunteer needs and a base program for building the Mozilla community, tracking the activities & many more.

Weakness:
1. There is no separate team for tracking & recognizing Reps through a proper channel, Until and unless individual Rep reaching out to the mentor and asking nomination for Rep of the Month.
2. Unstable Reps and refresher training needs to be implemented inside the Reps program.

  • Identify something that is currently not working well in the Mozilla Reps program and which you think could be easy to fix. How would you approach a possible fix?

There are no Reps gathering events, apart from weekly Reps call. These practices will help to know and interact with many unknown/new Reps. This helps in fixing the lack of communications across the Reps program.

  • What are the top three issues you want the Council to address in case you get elected? Why? How would you approach these issues?
  1. Refinement in the Mozilla Reps application and onboarding process.
  2. Proper knowledge transfer (KT) of Mozilla programs/activities to the Reps.
  3. Establishing a bridge between Mozilla Reps and Council team for sorting out community conflicts.
  • How do you believe you can support regional community health? - Can this be applied to Reps program too?

By measuring the activities of the regional community, I can guide and give proper support in strengthening the community. As the Mozilla Reps program is attached to regional communities this helps me in fixing and helping the community requirement, as a result, I can support the regional communities in a successful path.

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

As I mentioned in my introduction, I was associated with the Mozilla program over 7+ years and came across multiple positions and learned many key skills and qualities. I guess my experience, dedication, active communicator, consistency and time commitment with leadership qualities will surely help me to be an effective Council member.

  • Which of your contributions from the past 18 months had the biggest impact on the Reps program on a programmatic level?

Member of Reps Onboarding Team: Working with the onboarding team over one year and helping them in curating Mozilla Reps application.
Reps Resources Member: Associated with Reps Resources program over 2 years and helping the new Reps from multiple countries in filling the budget.

And also, in the past 18 months, I had engaged with our local community, contributing to the Mozilla programs and working with other fellow Mozillians for innovative programs.

  • Which past achievement as a Rep would you tell your best non-Mozilla friend about?

Where ever I go, I’m proud to represent myself as a Mozilla Representative. Mozilla program helped me in curving my career success. Nurtured me in learning new things and provided me an opportunity to work with the global team. We are united globally for building a better Internet alive and accessible for all. I’m happy to share anything about the Mozilla program with anyone easily and always in a tendency to building the community growth.

I want to thank you for taking the time out to read my answers!

#MozLove :hearts:
Bala

3 Likes

About Myself:

I am Faisal Aziz from India, I have been in Mozilla Reps Program since 2012. I have been part of many exciting journeys during these 8 years, I have served a council member term in 2016, and contributed to Mozilla as Localization Manager for Urdu Language, Mozilla Webmaker program, Reps 2.0 and many more. For brevity, I’ll keep my answers short. Please ping me if you need more insights over my comments.

Strength of Reps Program

  • Amazing passionate global community that has the potential to make positive changes in the lives of people.
  • Well established democratic community structure, tools, transparency, and people to support.
  • We are a community of people with diverse cultures,backgrounds, experiences and we enjoy our diversity.

Weakness of Reps Program

  • We are evolving rapidly, hence bring complexity, Need to simply stuff for reps so they can understand & participate in strategy building more efficiently.

  • it is difficult to measure the impact of such a big & multi-functional community, We are bringing new tools to counter this issue, however reporting should be way more simple, I’d suggest a mobile app would be a great way to submit activities instead opening reps portal and file reports.

  • Women-centric activities
    We lack activities that would attract women contributors, In past, we have started Women in Mozilla, however that initiative is dead now, I’d like to bring it back and encourage women contributors to participate.

As a reps & reps mentor Reporting activities is always a pain for me, I am continuously contributing along with my mentees as well however reporting on time is usually a challenge with everyone. I’d like to address it immediately by simplifying reporting and making it quick.
The approach could be: Mobile app, One step activity reporting, Activity checkin like Swarm App. etc

1. Listen to communities:
Regional communities are vital organs of reps program. Our strategies may not work for all. To understand this, we need to listen from communities about the way they would like to run the operation and accommodate those feedback into our strategies.

My Approach:

  • Connect with different regional communities once in a month.

  • Run quarterly surveys to understand their issues more thoroughly.

2. Bridge Reps & Non-Reps contributors & bring functional mentorship:

Many Non-Rep contributors are contributing to Mozilla round the clock, They may be not aware about benefits of reps program. Especially functional contributors can be great mentors in the program.

  • Explain non-rep active contributors the power of reps program and how they can benefit by joining reps program.
  • Explain them how Reps program empowers them to contribute more efficiently

3. Bring Women contributors onboard
Reps program doesn’t have a dedicated strategy to attract and empower women contributors.

My approach: Identify women leaders in regional communities, Work with them to understand ideas and feedback.

I have in the program for the past 8 years, I have helped in forming many regional communities in India, and we are the largest community in reps program. Being in the council will help me to understand community needs, define priorities to grow communities and contributors. This will ultimately improve community health and make them active than ever before.

  1. One of the earliest reps in program, I have seen transition of program hence can help currently evolving reps program.

  2. I have served as a council member before and actively involved with Rep program new makeover. I was to part of the Reps Review Team.

  3. I am also contributing to other functional areas like L10n, QA hence I have exposure to other functions as well which will help me to better collaborate with other teams.

  4. I am mentoring different regional as well as international communities, helping them to align with program goals.

Its been a wonderful journey in Mozilla, I’d say I was proud member of many initiatives thoughout my journey in Mozilla. Some notable mentions are:

  1. Hall of Fame - Mozilla Webmaker
    https://openmatt.org/hall-of-fame/

  2. Mozilla India Meetup
    https://wiki.mozilla.org/India/Mozilla_India_Meetup_2016

  3. Leadership Meeting Berlin

There are more words to express, Being an ex-council member I understand its a huge responsibility , and I believe i can use my extensive skills to grow and streamline our beloved reps community.

PS: Stay Strong , Stay Safe!

1 Like

Hi.

This is Bhuvana Meenakshi and I have been engaging with Mozilla since 6 years and I am from Tamil Nadu, India. I work for an NGO to improve Open Source community growth and more involved towards a qualitative research on “Bridging Gender Gap” in Open source movements. I am also a Mozilla Rep and a Resource Rep, apart from this I drive my regional community to actively participate in global movements and also take initiatives that is essential for the development of the sub communities under the region.

To make things more clear about me, I am the same Bhuvana who was nominated for the Council Election H2 2019 but did not get through :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: (anyway I took that opportunity to recollect on my works and set strategies to push myself). This time I am working on my strategies I set that would speak back to the development of the community.

Ans: How I basically see the Reps program is that it is the platform for helping to keep a track of active members who dedicate time for the Mozilla communities. Also this is the medium to make visible all the communities of Mozilla. Moreover, for those Mozillians who are not Reps this is a program which is overlooked by many to take as an example to pursue the goals as a volunteer to Mozilla.

The strength of this program is mainly about the bond and culture which brings more confidence for people to be back and contribute. The community needs and volunteers concerns are brought into light. When there is a solution to be resolved it is supported by various people from diverse backgrounds, geographic areas and so on, so this brings a new nuance to the solution and therefore the problem is identified deeply.

The weakness of the program is that how certain movements/missions may not apply for the local/regional communities so this must be watched more closely. The feedback or monitoring system must be regarded more seriously that it must have extensive note on how the Rep from the particular region can carry out events and how potential would be the impact.

Ans: The most essential need from Mozilla Reps program which is not working much well is about trainings. The on boarding program does make one aware to the mission and responsibilities makes one to initiate their journey on Reps. After this point it is clueless to move further, mentors can guide you through with events or when we are struck but a solid regular training is very vital. Although there are resources which exists for training “Resource Reps” , but a more engaging and interactive course or online live trainings for skill development of the Reps is necessary. For example, if I want to learn more on Rust find the best contributor who has actively engaged communities on this and the person can be part of the Council calls to teach on the subject, the most important part here is how to engage the community and align activities inline to it.

Ans: More than issues I would say the need of the hour, so three essential challenges that Council must take precise steps on are:

  1. Sustainability
    There are many who participate in this mission and taken efforts to spread the wings of Mozilla and would leave the community for various reasons. As of now there has been no research to understand why people leave or stop contributions towards this program. Only if the questions are answered there is a scope for a long term success. Success ratio is not just about how many join the program.

  2. Crisis handling
    We must stabilize more on how to act in emergency situations like that of COVID-19 or any other natural disasters that not only affects globally but also the regions where we have the Reps presence. A quick way to reach out to these people to know what is their essential need and if it is possible to go about with their planned events or not must be heard. In case of doing online events how can internet accessibility be ensured in such situations or connecting volunteers who are ready to help with those who are in need of help will be a simple solution.

  3. Diversity Recognition
    There has been not much study on how much gender diverse is the Reps program. If this is initiated it will help us in achieving a goal of being a diverse space to welcome more members of all gender categories and build the confidence to contribute further. Also a recognition about the works of Reps who self identify themselves as women, non-binary /queer can add more value to the program, this will further inspire people from these gender categories to step forward bravely and join the program.

Ans: This is the heart of the Reps program and this is the very reason I am here today. The Reps in my community practiced very good Community Health which in turn inspired me to join this program. So, in turn to the community I want to do my part to better channelize Community Health in my region and integrate the same for Reps program. As a good Community health practice I would say when it comes to volunteer driven programs the leadership or power dominance perishes which in turn makes egoistic and certainly lowers down the healthy contributions. If you can take example of the regional community I am part of , Mozilla Tamil Nadu we take initiatives and we follow examples and not leaders. The person who takes initiatives will have the onus to make it success or fail and even in both cases as a team we accept together. We understand the process and again work together. We recognize everyone involved in the process.

Ans: Being part of Reps since December 2017, I have developed skills to outreach, adapt to a team, take efforts to bridge the gap of the mission, create solutions to address the challenges of the volunteers and building partnerships with other Open Source communities that aligns with Mozilla’s mission. So, all these experiences as a whole will help in taking up various responsibilities and in turn serve back to many communities across the globe.

Ans:

In all of these events there had been a great number of tech enthusiasts who had interacted with and joined Mozilla program with much enthusiasm that they are volunteering even now actively. Also organizing the events had been the best part of learning where I faced all management challenges and learnt to be a good leader.

Ans:

  • The top most achievement is I have made a study of almost 10 Open Source communities active in my region and have understood how motives and strategies changes across communities. This made me keen to grasp the best practices from every community and how to add meaningfulness to this internet governed society.
  • When I was featured as a “Rep of the Month”, I sent across through the staff mailing list in my organization and told them about my works with Mozilla and events I do, also what efforts it requires to get the achievement.
  • Also I share about how I help to elevate the lives of women contributors in the communities to come forward with my own life story which I had to go through before I became a Mozillian and also my success story after I became a Mozillian.
  • I also show off my video director skills after our team won the ‘Best Popularity Award’ for the “Firefox Fights for You challenge” (this video is a great success for evangelizing Firefox among our local communities)
    Blog: https://kbmtechie.wordpress.com/2019/04/07/discovery-of-another-passion/
1 Like

Hello All,

I am Manel from Tunisia, based in Berlin now, I have been with Mozilla for like 8 years now, and participated in the Reps program since 2013.

I had the opportunity before (2018) to be part of the Reps council, which I enjoyed so much with its ups and downs and I learn many things about communities and different cultures. Since that time and I am part of the onboarding team, which is the main project/process I encourage and care a lot about from the first time I became part of it.

I nominate myself to be part of the Reps Council team because I want to see changes and make an impact in a way to revive the program make it better, have a clear understanding of the current contribution at Mozilla for all the other Reps around the world.

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

Mozilla Reps program was built more than 10 years ago with a goal to boost more the contribution of Mozillians and gives more direction and input when it comes to organizing events, workshops and asking for the budget needed to make it happen. It brought many people in the playground of Reps more than 200 persons and created a family, created more attachment between people from different cultures and cities around the world. It’s a program, where you can learn more about leadership, starting from being a mentee and have your mentor until the point you gain experience and you become a mentor. One thing people need to understand being a Reps is voluntary and is not something you need for your CV or finding a job, it is more a Will a commitment to be responsible of your own local community and represent your community everywhere. So it is not about swags, or money or image either reference, it is more a responsibility that you want to submit for and build more on top of it in your local community.

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

  • Mentorship: is something not working well or as before in the Mozilla Reps program, wen need to find a solution, to get more mentors also from different countries. Mentors should really keep their role active in a way to check their mentee, talk to them, try to make a call once a month at least, and keep the communication aligned. It is not something that I see Reps council should take it in action, it’s more to bring awareness to mentors and mentee to be responsible for their roles and reach out to each other.
  • Onboarding process: The onboarding process is much better than the old one, just apply and become Reps. the process itself is long but in a good way, it gives more opportunity for the local community to see the commitment of the person applying to be a Reps, the Reps council and onboarding team to see if this person taking the responsibility seriously or not, also for the person himself/herself if they really want to do it or not. the process is still unclear for the applicant and has some misalignment which I believe they can be fixed and we can have better tracking of the process if we have a better tool than Bugzilla for it.

What are the top three issues you want the Council to address in case you get elected? Why? How would you approach these issues?

  • Improve the current onboarding process: collecting feedback what went wrong and what went good in the past 18 months from the applicants and work on improvement based on that feedback, think about another solution rather than Bugzilla to make the process more reliable and scalable, think about making it more data-oriented that we can build metrics and tracks on top of that to know how we are progressing in the program.

  • Campaigns: Get more contributors to be part of the campaigns, this will help people to get back to contribution or bring new people in local communities. I think by bringing more awareness about campaigns, will bring more awareness and a reminder of How to contribute for Mozilla and help also gives a clear picture to people around the Reps world about Mozilla contribution as I see it some people lacking this information.

  • Help some communities to have a stable and equilibrated community: this is a point that I noticed from applicants or from different communities that they are lacking the gender equality in their communities and they don’t know how or from where to start to have an equilibrated community, It can be part of the issues, that we can help on to have more strong communities diverse.

How do you believe you can support regional community health? - Can this be applied to Reps program too?

I see regional community health is indirectly impacting the Reps program, or for better saying it is part of it, by applying or following the regional community health capacities

  • Internalization of Mozilla mission and overall goals,
  • Flexibility in problem-solving and meeting goal,
  • Strength of relationships among community members,
  • Capacity to resolve conflicts within the community,
  • Well-developed systems of communication,
  • Open and respectful dialogue that gets to the root cause of issues,
  • Gather feedback and perform an evaluation on activities and impact,
  • Make decisions that garner wide ownership in the community,
  • People who community members will listen to and follow, who can motivate and act as spokespersons, and who can help direct resources to where they will have the most impact for Mozilla,
  • Trusting and open relationship, with consistent communication
    As an individual in the Reps program, by just applying those points in my community or help to apply them in other communities, will definitely make a big impact in the Mozilla community and the Reps program as well, those are the keys to make the program better and much clearer.

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

I am not a person who likes talking about myself, but I trust my capability in this program, I tried it before and I failed in some part which were good learning for me now to do it better, I love being in contact with people from a different mindset and thinking, I like helping and guiding, sharing opinions and thought, help in the improvement and build strategies and this is why I see myself a fit as a council member. :slight_smile:

Which of your contributions from the past 18 months had the biggest impact on the Reps program on a programmatic level?

I was helping out in the onboarding process which I wish to continue on and improving it more.

Which past achievement as a Rep would you tell your best non-Mozilla friend about?

I honestly consider my whole journey in Mozilla so far, as an achievement: I joined in 2011, met so many nice people, who are my friends now, I made so many contributions in my local community and in Mozilla projects, Like webmaker first and Appmaker teaching web language, one of my achievement back then was to use this tools with disabled people and help them to code and express themselves through the web. I contributed so much in Firefox OS in the RTL and translation also working on automation tests and integration tests. contributed in the IoT program and was part of several prototypes I was the only contributor I guess that time. Even tho when those programs were killed I didn’t give, I still have the breath for Mozilla continued with Mozilla Tech Speakers, helping in facilitating the session and mentoring new tech speakers, which lead me into experiencing the reps council program to and be part of it.
All of those for me were achievements, and I see now the Reps program is not like before and losing the spirit of contribution so I want to step in and try to make an impact here.

If you think I am the right fit for being part of councils, please don’t hesitate to vote for me, I will be happy to help and listen to your thoughts. :pray: :smiley: :sunflower:

video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbW16R5P0nk&feature=youtu.be

Thank you all, stay healthy and safe :pray:

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