[IMPORTANT] Council Elections - H2 2019 - Nominee Q&A

Reps
5

Hi,
This is Bhuvana Meenakshi, I am a Mozillian since 5 years. Started my journey with Mozilla as a Firefox Student Ambassador and bagged up a few badges too :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: I then discovered the regional community of India, Mozilla Tamil Nadu where my friend and me were the first women contributors to join the community. I wish there could have been more women contesting for this nomination as well :slight_smile: I tried to bring the culture of Open Source across my city and then wanted to spread my wings across the global community, so I applied to become a Mozilla Rep in 2017 and also now a Resource Rep (got the lovely news as I was just putting up this post :grinning:, means more responsibility to economically run the program feasibly). Also very happy that I was featured as Rep of the Month recently.

Apart from my life in Mozilla I also work for an NGO as a researcher to bridge the gender gap across Indian Wikimedia communities. Also since I have time now in hand for community works I wanted to nominate myself here.

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

Mozilla Reps is a wonderful program for people to serve the larger community and the understanding of leadership is more of taking up responsibilities with much care. The challenge has always been to take risks as a volunteer and educate everyone to abide by the CoCs thereby forming a healthy 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?

Code contributions: There are many communities which are reaching out for to do code contributions so more campaigns can be focused on improving this area. This way we can help the contributors to also get in touch with the right staff in Mozilla who can help them improving the quality contribution.
Changes required on functional areas: The functional areas needs to be updated as the focus and projects gets advanced in the core team of Mozilla so that the Reps can mention the outputs in specific to the projects they are focusing.This includes an improvisation in the metrics as well.
Furnish the CoCs: The Code of Conducts to be followed in any events conducted by Reps needs to be put up at the event place in the display form and must be followed strictly. Also the Reps must mention on this to any event they are invited as a speaker or attending the same. This must be updated on the main Reps portal as well along with the PoC(Point of Contact). This will help in improving a safe space for the communities/Reps to participate in both online/offline events.

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

Code contributions: Ask communities on what sort of projects they are aware and if they have access to all the code that is open on Github and MDN docs. Is there any challenge they are facing for not contributing to the same although they are highly interested.

Changes required on functional areas: Approach the Mozilla staff members and ask their opinions on adding them to the portal if it will be feasible for tracking the deliverables from the contributors on the particular area.

Furnish the CoCs: Workout with the Diversity and Inclusion team and the Reps from all regions in order to customize it in accordance with their requirements on creating the “safe spaces” for their regions by getting a feedback from the community members.

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

There must be a Strategy workshop conducted across the communities to analyze the health of the communities as this is not recorded anywhere. This will involve various aspects like Communication, Campaigns, Activities, Plannings and Policies will be discussed based on time frame of achievements like current, past and future. Depending on this the strategies must be redefined and the floor must be made open for recommendations which the Reps must take a call representing their local region. Upon validating these recommendations the consensus will be made by the Council on how to replenish the Reps program.

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

As mentioned in my introduction, I have experience and exposure towards how a structured Open Source and Free Knowledge programs works and I research on the same. This gives me an intention to dream how I also wish Mozilla program to crystallize its form and be a community-friendly platform that welcomes a gender and neuro diverse ecosystem.

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

In all 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.

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

  • 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” :sunglasses: (this video is a great success for evangelizing Firefox among our local communities)
    Blog: Discovery of another passion! – print("Hello World!");

P.S.: I also made a small video, do watch it: https://youtu.be/WjGr5HJM0fc (I got the news that I had been selected a Resource Rep after I finished the video so did not include it :grin:)

Misc: Also this is a playlist of my Mozilla contributions - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zojIKKn8ITI&list=PLATIgYbGtJDb0uOMgb0w_2rMzXxdj9543

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