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

Reps
#1

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 October 6th, 23:59 UTC . Note that this is mandatory.

  • What is, in your own view, the Mozilla Reps programā€™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!

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#2

Hello everyone! Here Iā€™m again :smiley:

Iā€™m Felipe (@felipez3r0) from Jaboticabal / SĆ£o Paulo - Brazil.

A quick presentation about myself: Iā€™m a professor, right now Iā€™m doing a Masterā€™s in Education (Iā€™m researching about Open licenses and open educational resources) also, Iā€™m a Web developer.

I joined Mozilla in 2014 after a Firefox OS Hackathon organized by the community. Nowadays Iā€™m a Mozilla Rep, Mozilla Tech Speaker, a mentor in the Mozilla Open Leaders program, and highly involved with community engagement in Brazil. In the past, I was involved with Mozilla Clubs, Mozilla Campus Clubs, Webmaker program, MDN, Localization, and others.

A: Our biggest strength: I still believe that our reach is our biggest strength, we have a lot of Reps and Reps in a lot of different regions of the world.
Our biggest weakness: Since the last election, I started to believe that our biggest weakness is the monitoring/tracking of the local communitiesā€™ health. Sometimes we lose a community as a whole because of small local problems that go unsolved.

A: Something I would love to have (and maybe selecting one person to work on it can solve) is a more diverse range of activities for Reps to realize published in the Activate portal, maybe a new activity each month or bi-monthly.

A: 1. Communities health tracking
2. Keep improving the onboarding process
3. More activities for Activate

A: Since I joined the community in 2014, I tried to participate and keep in touch with every activity the local community is doing (or trying to do). Helping new members to get on board is vital to community health. Another critical topic is conflict resolution, during a year we implemented a Conflict Resolution Committee here in the Brazilian community.

A: As I said in my brief presentation Iā€™m a professor since 2014, so I have a good set of communication and organization skills, also I organize a tech event here in Jaboticabal since 2015 and another one in Taquaritinga since 2017. My abilities as a professor, as an event organizer, and as a Mozilla volunteer highly involved with community engagement for the past years could help me to help the Reps Council effectively.

A: My participation in the LATAM Reps Weekly Call pilot, I helped as the host for the first session of the pilot (and sharing some feedback after this session), also I delivered at least 16 talks on topics related to Mozilla during that time.

A: I would probably talk about my contributions to events like Campus Party Brazil and BrazilJS, in both events (in more than one edition) Iā€™ve helped in the organization of the community presence and helped with activities.

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#3

Hello Amazing Reps!

Iā€™m Shahbaz (@shahbaz17) from Ranchi, India. I am a Reps Mentor and a Review team member and I have been a mozillian for 6 years now.

What is, in your own view, the Mozilla Reps programā€™s biggest strength and weakness?

Strength- Mozilla Reps are a set of diverse global leaders with different skill sets, abilities, cultural backgrounds, ages, experiences, and learning interests. Mozilla Reps are passionate people working closely to achieve a common mission.
Weakness - Reps and Rep Mentorsā€™ inactivity hurts the Community the most since they tend to not nominate Mozillians for MoM or Reps for RoM, when theyā€™re doing good. This creates a chain reaction where the activities go unrecognized. This leads to the inactivity of the Reps. But I think initiatives like Mission Driven Mozillian will bring new faces to the Community and also keep engaging the present Reps to be active.

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?

  • Opportunity - Giving more opportunities to the Reps will enable them to be active. I see Mozillian of the Month a success, this way Mozillians and Reps nominating both gets recognition and visibility. Reps Mentor should also be given the same opportunity. This will enable them to be in touch with the Reps.
  • Communication - Mozillians though asked to join the Reps call to stay up to date with the Reps Program, arenā€™t joining. I am hoping this can be improved with the new platform coming next year and newsletter which is already in use. I would like to continue the same with few minor changes such as hosting Podcasts inviting Reps sharing their experiences. Also, would like to work on faster implementation on Mission driven Mozillian.
  • Though the Reporting is something which the council is working on, and we have seen an improvement on that but I think we can improve the reporting more by letting Reps use Mobile ApplicationReps Application - Beta Phase to Report their work on the go, allowing easy access to reporting on the go. I would like to lead this initiative.

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

  • Opportunity - Highlighting the Reps and Mozillians efforts in the form of tweets, emails, shout-outs, and recommendations can make the Volunteer more visible within the community.
  • Communication - Communication is the backbone of Mozilla Reps Program and regional communities are the pillars of the program. Discourse, Newsletter and Recognizing Regional Communities on social media is something that is working well. But still, we see Reps Mentor not looking after their Mentee and not giving enough credits and recognition. Reps Mentor-Mentee communication can be improved. More focus on Mission Driven Mozillian should be given.
  • Reps Onboarding - Recognising Mozillians to be the leader of their community. This can be achieved with the MDM. Mozillians who arenā€™t already a Rep, should be given the opportunity and training to be a Rep.

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

As I mentioned above, Regional Communities are the pillars of the Reps Program, with communication, giving more opportunities and onboarding new reps will make our pillars strong. Onboarding experience should be improved to better understand the Reps background and their work.

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

I believe I have very strong Leadership, Innovative and Communication Skills. I am a Reps Mentor, Reps Resource Member and Reps Review Member. I lead other volunteer groups at my local community, such as Google Developer Group and Serverless Days Group, which makes me understand different perspectives of volunteers contributing to the program. We at our local community calling other communities to develop the open source culture. I have joined the Mozilla program 6 years back, and from that time I have a principal in life, Learn, Teach and be Innovative. This enables the people around you to be a better leader and take the program to the next level. These qualities will 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?

I am Reps Mentor, Reps Resource Member and Reps Review Member, helped Reps get recognition by looking after their contribution and hosting monthly calls with my Mentees and other mozillians. As a Resource Reps, I have helped Reps file budget and swag requests. Apart from these I have visited Indian states and Southeast Asian countries and learned about the local communities present there.

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

Iā€™m a Mozilla Representative who does not just Mentor fellow Reps and Mozillians or Review their requests, my proud achievement for Mozilla is to be able to fight for a mission that unites us as one. We are not guardians or protectors of the internet, we are the same people(me and my non-Mozilla friend), but to have been able to join this Global mission and create an impact onto something that affects 2 Billion people worldwide directly, and the ones who arenā€™t even on the Web right now, indirectly. We are the ones who have taken upon ourselves the mission to work on Internet Health while others seek to exploit it.

Hereā€™s a video of me talking about my key ideas on my focus if and when you choose to elect me to represent you in the Council - YouTube video

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.

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#4

Hello Everyone,

Iā€™m Bala Subramaniyan from Hyderabad, India. Iā€™m associated with Mozilla over 7+ years and came across multiple positions.

Currently, Iā€™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 programā€™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, Iā€™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. Iā€™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

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#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 programā€™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 ā€œsafe spacesā€ 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 ā€œRep of the Monthā€, 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 ā€˜Best Popularity Awardā€™ for the ā€œFirefox Fights for You challengeā€ :sunglasses: (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/

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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#6

Hi friends, sorry for the late response. My office were robbed during the past week and I have been quite busy with all the paperwork :frowning:

My name is Luis a.k.a as lasr21 Iā€™m a happy Mozillian from :mexico: that have been around since 2009 :older_man:.

What is, in your own view, the Mozilla Reps programā€™s biggest strength and weakness?

Strength: With the time come the experience, the program is now a important part of Mozilla and have a clear process that a huge strength

Weakness: we tend to forget the impact of small events, I got stuck on my head a phrase from Guillermo @deimidis about that we must try to focus on our neighborhood yes it dont be the huge event but we are making step by step a change.

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?

Swag, itā€™s my understanding that Mozilla change the vendor and the prices go to the clouds, inform which countries are easy to send swag and which ones the easy answer is to make it local.

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

Geographical diversity of reps, if you see the reps map, there are some places where we donā€™t any presence and a global community we should try to have someone who can spread some MozLove around.

Recognition, despite the fact that every rep around the globe is here for the mission itā€™s always feel cool to feel recognize.
Documentation, nor more than ever there are several docs,presentations and information around that sometimes get lost and difficult to find.

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

The Conflict Resolution Committee was a great initiative, we should continue working and investing in local and regional communities, this totally apply to the reps program. Reps serve this tricky position where you serve as a bridge and connector to potential new members to the community.

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

Experience working with other tech communities, fostering relations and mentoring about how they can grow and have impact.
Organizing international events and helping close to 20 non-mozilla communities It allow me to have some perspective of how things work with different communities.

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

Been part of the organization team for the first open source contributors summit in Mexico , we gather 500 people who know how they can contribute to 19 different projects including Firefox

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

The collaboration we have been creating with other communities in Mexico, we are part of this new era of communities where we try to help each other with contacts, venues. That will are part of the organization committee of the first Jsconf Mexico.

I prepare a small video, here it is.

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