[IMPORTANT] Council Elections - Spring 2018 - Nominee Q&A

Hey all,
This is the second step into the Election Process. In this thread the 11 nominees should post their answers to the following questions:

  1. What is, in your own view, the Mozilla Reps program’s biggest strength and weakness?
  2. 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?
  3. What are the top three issues you want the Council to address in case you get elected? Why? How would you approach these issues?
  4. What are the specific qualities and skills that you have that you think will help you be an effective Council member?
  5. Which of your contributions from the past 18 months had the biggest impact on the Reps program on a programmatic level?
  6. Which past achievement as a Rep would you tell your best non-Mozilla friend about?
  7. Not all Reps are using the reporting form to report their Reps activities. Why do you think that is?

Let me know if you have any concerns.

PS: Reminder -> These questions were reworked by Michael Kohler to reflect the discussion on Discourse.

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

A lot of people from different culture, languages and continents with the same ideals, promoting the Mozilla manifesto (inside the same program).
Also, not all the Reps are involved or aligned in what the Reps program is doing, so we need to let our fellows mozillians to help the program to grow, not only to support their community.

The Reps program is not anymore a way to get funds or swag but more, and we need that this important update is understood from everyone.

  1. 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?

I said one year ago the Portal, and I think the same as developer. Now also with the integration of Community Analytics is an important part of the Mozilla ecosystem because what we do is tracked and used to plan what Mozilla have to do and how is going.
In few words is a critical piece of the big puzzle that is Mozilla because what we do is used to plan what we will do later.
Only doing our bests, helping our community to be healthy, growing and get fun.

In few words we need a better report system, automatized if possible, and that every Rep as part of the task he has to do report everything. Remember if you are not reporting anything but you are doing something in any case for the Reps program you are an inactive Reps. Check https://reps.mozilla.org/dashboard/kpi/ to see this issue.

To fix that other than improve the interface and simplify we need to enforce to use it to all of us.

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

When I will join the Council again I will continue to work on the accountability of the Council and of the Reps starting from the onboarding to the report system.
Many times I talked about how to improve the Reps portal, starting from the report system from a browser extension to prototype a new interface to maybe a telegram bot?
I don’t know right now the best solution, but we need to see who is active and about what, the report system is our core way to check it, and we need that to be more simple.
Mission Driven Mozillians will be our north star for the future, and I was already involved on leading the project for the Council. We need to do more to be ready to cover that role for all the Mozilla communities.
The Mozilla Reps program is not anymore a way to get swag or budget but a way to empower your community to grow and do their best, this three points are part of my vision that are only an evolution of my points of a year ago.

  1. What are the specific qualities and skills that you have that you think will help you be an effective Council member?
  • An year ago I wrote: Coaching, Motivation on changes and Experience. Today I think that now they are improved but I will focus more on: Accountability of the Council, Rules changing and Experience.
  • The Council can be slow and need to be supported, so we need to help as Reps and after an experience of a year (also as a Council Chair) is important to track what the Council is doing for the program.
  • Rules changing, we need to adapt the program to Mission Driven Mozillians, so we need to be update many things for the challenges that are waiting us as community. As example renewability, reporting, recognition and metrics.
  • Experience again because now I have also the experience of a year in the Council and a better overview of the program.
  1. Which of your contributions from the past 18 months had the biggest impact on the Reps program on a programmatic level?

I was part of the initiative of a year ago of Reps Mobilizer Experiment before to join the council. This helped to understand what the program has to do for Mobilizers, community mobilizers that is the focus of our program.
18 months ago I was involved also on Reps Regional Coaches defining the structure but now the project is dormant because of different priorities, again Mission Driven Mozillians.
In the last month I started to contribute back on the portal with different improvements with new little things but more an in the queue.
Inside the Council I worked on create and leading the Onboarding team, to publish the Open Letter (switched to open Conversation), maintenance of old applications still opened after months/years, working on the first internal draft for Reps Mobilizer, write last 2 all hands summaries and many other things.

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

When I joined Mozilla and my local community, Mozilla Italia, was missing in a lot of events in the country but also on internet. Now the situation is different with the help of many members of my community now we are part of the Italian Open Source movement more strong than 5 years ago.
What means be part of the Italian Open Source movement? Good question, this means that people are reaching us (for many reasons) because know that we exist.

A collateral achievement that I wasn’t thinking is friendship inside my community and in the international one. I wasn’t thinking that is possible to have friends that you met maybe twice for year, that are international also, and you talk with them daily.

  1. Not all Reps are using the reporting form to report their Reps activities. Why do you think that is?

Today the only way to reward Reps is checking what they are doing and is not fair to everyone to have in the program people inactive.
The accountability is important because everyone has to do what the Reps role is asking us, so to encourage them we need more mentors to have a friend to ask everything and to help to be aligned with the Mozilla mission.
On the onboarding I tried to reactive applications incomplete or without answers from the applicants after weeks or months. Now we have the rule to close or reject an accepted application after 3 weeks of silence. This is one of the things about accountability that we need to do similarly also on reporting.
We need to enforce the reporting to all the Reps and automatize the process: if you are not reporting nothing you are not aligned with Mozilla (probably) and the program so is required a specific onboarding.

I already explained above different issues of the reporting and actually for me the reasons for people that is not reporting that is self-made, not automatized and veryyyyyy boring to fill.

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

Second my point of view, the biggest strength of the Reps program is to be able to connect all the people who want to be in real active to represent Mozilla as a volunteer, and all people interested to involve everyone in our mission as mozillians. I’m very pleased to have this awesome opportunity to know and connect myself with other people of different culture in all the world, and all that we can learn one with the other is something of special.

About the weakness, I think that sometimes not all reps seems to be able easily to get their self-updated, and not all reps seem to feel involved in the program. One example is the percentage of the vote for the council in the last elections. I think that is important to understand why and try to collect information helpful to improve this awesome program and in general to increase the active participation of the Reps.

2. 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?

I will try to don’t write a lot. So I will take only one issue that I think is important, and I will try to explain how is my approach to fix it.

I’m not only a Reps but I’m also a Community Coach in Europe and a Reps Resource member, and I see that sometimes the reps feel to be alone in their local communities. Talking with them, I see that sometimes they need more than a Budget for doing something or Swags for their events.
I think that we need to be able to provide something to give at everyone an open opportunity to share their story, their needs, what works and what not with all the other Reps that are near at them. My approach to fixing it’s easy, involve everyone in the discussion to define a solution helpful to resolve the issue.

For example, to resolve this issue, I see that a lot of reps found helpful the European Gathering to know all the reps active in Europe and create a comfortable situation to talk about us and how can reach our goals as reps in Europe. I think that this type of gathering was helpful to connect all in their specific region and not only in Europe.

I know that is not easy to create a lot of Gathering as those, so, my proposal to resolve it creates a set of specific discourse category and a monthly call per each region to maintain a constant connection of all people.
If you think that this approach will be helpful for this issue or someone of you wants to start to discuss on it to find another approach, we can open a new topic in the Reps category to evaluate altogether if it is something of helpful or not.

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

The three issues are:
1. Increase the connection between the Reps in their region

2. Increase the connection between the Reps program and the other Mozilla projects or programs to helps to connect the reps at the other Mozilla volunteers that are active in other Mozilla initiatives locally.

3. Improve the training system in order to help the reps to get their self-updated constantly

1. I think that connect more people all together is something of helpful to maintain all the reps more active, and this will be helpfull for all to feel to be more included and near at what happens every day in their region/continent. For this first, we could send at all reps a form, to understand their feeling, which platform they prefer in their region and how many time they could spend into the Regional gathering.

2. Second my opinion, as mozillians we do a lot of things and probably we can reach better our goals and involve more people in our causes if we are more connected one each other. The overview of the Reps wiki page say that our mission is to empower and to help push responsibility to the edges in order to help the Mozilla contributor base grow, so it is essential that we know all people near us and try to connect all those together. The action that I propose is that per each nation or region all people involved in other Mozilla programs know who are the local reps. The Reps are there for the people and exists to be near at the other mozillians, so there must be a point of reference in case of necessity for all.

3. Sometimes I see that is impossible for all reps to get their self-updated constantly with the calls and the Etherpads, and sometimes, it’s important a constant process to maintain a good status of knowledge of the program over the years. I think that we need to have a training system in onboarding (somethings as this: https://mozilla.teachable.com/), and something to test every year (or six months) the knowledge of the reps into the program and into the Mozilla mission. My proposal is to create a course in onboarding similar at those in the link shared, and create a quiz with a gamification system for win swags or receive a vouch on mozillians for those who are active and maintain their self-updated during the years.

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

In general, I prefer to demonstrate my qualities and skills with the facts and not with words, but, about me as a Council member, I love to be inclusive, I’m consistent, and I love to obtain tangible results. Inside the council, I will contribute constantly to all the things that I will do and, I will get the best effort possible in all the goals that I will achieve as Council member. Every reps must be represented well inside the council and this is what I want to constantly achieve primarily.

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

In the last months, I preferred to focus my contributions at different levels.

Locally, I increased the number of people interested to be involved in the Mozilla mission. In the last three months, for example, I interact with a lot of people talking about the WebVR and our values in a big event with more than two thousand of attendees. I made one hackathon on IoT and I talk about the newest Mozilla IoT Project. All those without any Budget or Swag requests. On a programmatic level, I think that is important to share with the other active Reps in my country all these experiences to reduce the cost increases the impact of our action.

Nationally, At the end of the last year I created a survey for all the Italian community to understand the situation and the needs of all the active volunteers. I saw that one of the most important issues inside our community was the inclusion. So, I started to create and promote more opportunity for everyone to get updated on what happening around Mozilla and to interact one with the others in all the teams inside our Italian community. I started to run recorded Monthly national calls, I promote the increase of the channels on Telegram related at our community. I ask to connect the existent Italian IRC Channels at specific Telegram groups, and the last but not the least, I promote the constant dialogue between all the Italian Reps. All those contributions I think that will have a big impact on the Reps program here in local for the mission that we have as reps, and for the values that we must represent.

Internationally, in the last months when I had the opportunity to talk with other Reps here in Europe, my first thing is to try to create a connection with them. I think that the most important way to help each other in our mission as Reps is to talk and share altogether our experience. This council election too is a great experience to share our ideas, so please, if you think that some of what I wrote is interesting for you, or, you think that you need more details, I (and I suppose the other candidate) am at your disposal to continue to discuss on it.

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

Probably I will talk about the my national community. I’m proud of all the changes that I and the other Reps had made over the last years in my national community. I decided to be a Reps because I’m not only proud to represent as a volunteer Mozilla, but because this role has a more another important goal. Fuel the movement creating opportunities for the others, and I’m proud of what we made here in our nation all together over the time.

7. Not all Reps are using the reporting form to report their Reps activities. Why do you think that is?

I think that depends on some factors. The first one is that not all Reps feel that is necessary to do it. I think that we must talk more specifically about the importance to report the information about what we do as reps. The second one is that not in all the cases the activities in the Reps portal are run by reps, but from other people inside their communities. So, this can create blocks to measure well the real impact and the metrics of the activities done. Another secondary aspect is that sometimes the activities are runned locally and the information collected is not in English and this can create other blocks to report the information about. What we can try to do is to increase the support at the reps, ask why they didn’t use the Reporting form and what they feel necessary in order to increase their accountability to fill the form.

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

  • Strength - diverse global communities that include people with different abilities, culture-background, age, experiences, and interests.

  • Weakness - lack of resources (time) to keep engaging and motivating long-time participator. People still contribute, with or without Rep program seems less different.

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?

  1. Report system is not working well.

    • It’s difficult to tell if a Rep is an active contributor or not from personal profile page (eg., https://reps.mozilla.org/u/irvin/ ) because people don’t report.
    • Report procedure is frustrated that need to choose from 3 lists of activities, initiative and contribution area. Not easy to suggest or remove some categories from the list.

    My solution is,

    • Adding some buttons of most common activities on rep dashboard. People can report most common activities by clicking the button, and ease the form filling experience.
    • Showing statistic of activities categories on rep personal profile and rep portal. Making report data more discoverable.
    • Add a link to discourse discussion and ask people to suggest options of 3 lists.
  2. Event check-in system is not working well.

    • Non-vouched Mozillians cannot sign into the event with “I attended this event” button.
    • Too complicated to create the event that prevents people from doing so.

    My solution is,

    • Enable everyone to “attended the event” whether they’re vouched-Mozillians or has no Mozillians account. Add a QR code lead to simple sign-up form, ask people to just leave their nickname and email (options) if they’re not logged-in.
    • If the event is not asking for resources, we can make most form item optionable.

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. Run Rep survey every quarter, either in the simple or systematic way. Ask people’s feelings, suggestions on Rep Program and Mozilla.
    Get some metrics.

  2. Let Rep become more important to Mozilla, with above data. Beside representing Mozilla, let Rep also represent our user.

  3. Engage more with rep (begin with the survey).

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

  • I had been in rep program from the beginning since 2012. I’m an experienced Mozillians participating in both regional and global community for more than 14 years. I had seen the beginning of the project and it’s evolving. I know the problems, weakness, and strength of Mozilla.

  • I know the challenge to grows the community from its birth. I can help ease the difficult of local rep and community.

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?

  • I had been voted as “the most influence” of Mozilla Summit 2013 in SFO venue.
  • I had engaging/speaking to thousands of students, volunteers and users, tell them a little about Mozilla, and help them as a rep.

Not all Reps are using the reporting form to report their Reps activities. Why do you think that is?

  • I had addressed the problem and solution in question 2.


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Impressive responses

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

The biggest strength of this program is that it provides a platform across the globe to connect with likeminded people. I feel this program is an ideal example of unity in diversity.

I, somehow feel that the program has been diluted to some extent. Too many people, who do not even have the potential to bear the responsibilities, have been appointed as Reps. There should be a proper screening process for appointing the Reps.

2. 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?

Somehow, we are lagging behind to measure the success metrics of the events happening. Numerous Reps are organizing events at various corners of the world, but we are not very sure about the impact of those events. In short, we can work on measuring impacts so that we can properly channelize the resources and efforts.

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

The top three issues that I would like to address:
• Parameters for appointing Reps
• Make sure no Reps are becoming inactive
• Making sure Resource Reps are helping their fellow Reps

As mentioned above there should be proper screening process while appointing the Reps. During the orientation period, each rep should be given a number of tasks, which could prove their efficiency and potential. Failing to do so, he/she should not be appointed as Rep.

Secondly, during a particular campaign (for eg. MozActivate Campaign) only few projects are kept in main focus. So, those who fail to relate with those projects could become inactive. So, we should take initiatives that though we are running a campaign, but contribution in other projects by the Reps/volunteers get equal values.

There are very few Resource Reps across the globe compared to the number of Reps. So, we need to make sure that all Resource Reps are helping out their fellow non Resource Reps. I feel this thing needs to be addressed. Probably, we could ask both Resource and non Resource Reps to have regular online meet ups and send the report to the council at a particular interval of time.

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

I guess my dedication, consistency and time commitment will surely help me to be an effective Council member.

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

I am one of the budget Review Team members. So, I think reviewing various budgets submitted by the Resource Reps surely influence the Reps program at a macro level.

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

Creating a strong Womoz community in my city, Delhi is one of my achievements. When I became the Rep, there was only one more womoz Rep in my city. So, practically there were two women from Delhi who were contributing. Gradually, we were successful in involving more women into open source contribution.

7. Not all Reps are using the reporting form to report their Reps activities. Why do you think that is?

I feel they are lacking proper guidance. Sometimes, there is a lack of communication and guidance from the mentor. We need to figure a way out so that the mentor- mentees have regular interactions.

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

  • Our diversity is our strength. Millions of Users, thousands of Mozillians, hundreds of Reps and many other from across the globe collaborating together for a healthy Internet.

  • We need to make sure we’re all working together in the same direction to embrace Mozilla Mission. It’s not our weakness but we are still learning and growing in this area. We need to work smarter as to how we can bring everyone together under one umbrella, parallely allowing every individual to work in their own way.

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?

  • Though our diversity is our strength. But we still need to work on the balance between different parts of the world. Have thousands of people from one area is good but if we are not able to get even hundreds from another area means something is not right from our side. We have to keep updating and make a ecosystem which can sustain diverse group of people from diverse region.

  • There is no easy fix but it’s an ongoing process. Creating a special group of Volunteer and Staff to study the ecosystem of regions which lakhs representation can help to better support them. Council can play a big role in this to under regional diversity and can encourage volunteer Leadership.

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. To establish a balance of volunteer representation from diversion region :

    • As i said above there is no easy fix but it’s an ongoing process.

    • Creating a special group of Volunteer and Staff to study the ecosystem of regions which lakhs representation can help to better support them.

    • Council can play a big role in this to under regional diversity and can encourage volunteer Leadership.

  2. In strengthening local/regional community :

    • Managing small local/regional community is more effective.

    • By encouraging regional leadership and initiatives which aligns with Mozilla goals helps to get better outcome from small group of people.

    • If we focus on strengthening local/regional community it will automatically help in strengthening bigger communities and become self sustaining.

    • It will help to get away from resource(Budget & Swag) dependency.

  3. Contributors Journey, Opportunities & Recognition :

    • Providing a clear picture from day one to a contributor to make them believe in Mozilla Mission.

    • Always maintaining a connection and providing diverse opportunities to them to work on. I have seen ups/downs because of which many contributors go inactive due to less opportunity to participate.

    • Have a defined SOP for recognition. It can be as small as a “thank you” but should come in a way that makes the contributor feel special. We are doing good on this part but still we have to improve to make it more visible.

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

  • Experience in the key which help in solving any complex problems. I have been working with diverse group of people and understand their needs from last five years. It will helps me to better understand my fellow Rep.

  • Being a good listener help me to think deeper and understand the situation.

  • Being adaptive makes me comfortable in updating with the situation. It allows me think from different perspective.

  • Being a risk taker allows me to experiment and evolve. Sometimes to progress in a new direction for the betterment of a program we have to take risk and become adaptive to change.

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

  • India Local Gear Store Maintainer : An initiative started in 2016 to locally produce and ship gear(swags) required for Activate Mozilla Workshop/Hackathons/Events in India. From Volunteer perspective this is helping in reducing the overall time to process the swag requested by Reps. From Reps Program perspective it helped in reducing the international shipping and gear production cost to Reps program. We are experimenting on International shipping as well.

  • Organised Mozilla India Meetup 2016 : An event hosted by Mozilla India Community in India with people from different sub communities based on gender diversity, regional representation, activities and leadership in community. This event was mainly focus on developing options for the direction, vision, strategy and roadmap of the Mozilla India community for the year 2016-17, and undertaking detailed planning, structure and workflow of the contribution pathways.

  • Organising Team of Rain of Rust : Rain of Rust Campaign, a month-long global campaign specifically focused on the Rust language. It has taken place in June 2017 in collaboration with the Rust community. It was a successful campaign and was one of the featured campaign of the year.

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

  1. Becoming a Mozilla Rep is an achievement in itself. But being a Reps i can say that being part of Mozilla Reps Council which is the governing body of the Mozilla Reps Program where I helped leaders(called Reps) become better more than leaders. I help them master their strengths, improve on their weaknesses and give feedback on their efforts in the community.

  2. Working with diverse people in All Hands and other events.

  3. Managing & Organizing :

Not all Reps are using the reporting form to report their Reps activities. Why do you think that is?

  • There can be multiple reason for the same. It maybe that the limited time a Rep have is dedicated to activities they do and when they are done they move on to next activity.

  • Reporting sometimes becomes a boring job to do as its again filling up a form.

  • Mentors can play a big role in helping their Mentee with Reporting. If they have regular conversation and provide feedback about their initiative/events then the Rep will be motivated to write and fill the report.

  • For example I always talk with my mentees to see how they are doing and what help they need. Providing them feedback and asking them to share the report helps to activate them to complete the reporting part.

Campaign Video

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

Mozilla Reps Program is not just a community program but a global platform serves as voice of individuals, people, and diverse groups, around the world. A movement that empowers people and revolutionize diverse geographies to stand and advocate for freedom and openness by spreading knowledge, learning and mutual respect.

Even being so vast and diverse in cultures and geographies, Reps Program hold together global communities in a thread of inclusion, mutual respect and wisdom and that is the biggest strength of Mozilla Reps Program.

Nothing is perfect in this world! and reps program do have some flaws that can be managed.

Mozilla Reps program is heading in a exciting direction, and I observed the information conveyed to community about future strategy, directions, goals are sometimes too complex to understand and a big section of global communities found themselves clueless or lost and unable to sync.I believe this area needs immediate attention

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?

I have observed few arias that needs to be fixed:

Lets think about ground!

  • We are talking strategies, however we need to really look on ground zero about strategies implemented and a retrospect impact and values.

  • Do our communities are really happy or motivated? and moving in the direction, Mozilla would like to see ? Are we making things complex?

Defining Expectation

  • For any initiative/Experiment/Strategy a clear expectation should be defined and actively communicated to communities which is lacking right now.

  • There should be a coherent value proposition for both project and contributor.

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. From Genesis of RepNext to Mission Driven Mozillians

  • Being in council during RepsNext genesis given me great opportunity & experience to explore the vision and future of Reps Program,

  • I would like to address the transition we had and continue with new challenge statements in implementation of Mission Driven strategy program.

2. Efficient Event Reporting(EER)

  • Reps doing amazing events worldwide, however reporting back it still a bottleneck, To make our lives easier, I will propose a mobile app that would allow Reps to instantly capture, moments, feedbacks and reports on the way.
  • Proposed app will also help reps to track budgets and resource efficiently and upload bills and pictures.

3. Recognition and Embracing D&I

  • During my council tenure, We tried hard to push this card, However during analysis we found that recognition framework is sensitive, complex and diverse in nature. It requires extensive understanding for ideating this because the definition varies at different instance.

  • I would give this card a momentum again, Mission Driven Strategy consist recognition as project theme and I’ll strive hard to get it done in my tenure considering now the project has great insights and expertise available on dice.

  • Create equal opportunities for both upstream & non-upstream contributors with respect to D&I guidelines on both regional and global level.

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

  • Mozillian since 2012, I find myself among people who laid foundation of Mozilla India.

  • Proud and experienced member served council in 2016 and played significant role in designing Reps Review Module.

  • Had worked with multiple Project Team inside Mozilla and familiar with diverse & global communities and understand their challenges and pain area.

  • Active communicator, committed & passionate towards Mozilla and Communities.

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

  • Served Reps Council and was part of RepNext strategy.

  • Served as Reps Review Team Member from inception to current state, contributed as Review team member to allocate resources and helped in planning strategy to allocate resources globally.

  • Co-organizer of Mozilla India meetup 2016, Collaborated with community reps to understand challenge statements and create a long term strategy to define a flexible model to accommodate different functional group and help them to succeed.

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

During Leadership Meet at Berlin, I fortunately got an opportunity to present a walkthrough of the work council have accomplished to Mozilla’s Leadership, which was indeed a lifetime achievement for a volunteer. I am glad to see them convinced by our efforts :slight_smile:

Not all Reps are using the reporting form to report their Reps activities. Why do you think
In my opinion these could be the reasons:

  • It might be annoying to open portal for reporting in the age of apps where same can be accomplished in few clicks.
  • They dont understand importance and significance of reporting.
  • No response from mentors on reports might discourage them.

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

Strength:

In a small quote, “The biggest strength is openness as anyone who has a passion for Open source, about Mozilla mission can indulge in the program and be mentored into being the best Rep one can be.”

Weakness:

  • The biggest weakness I perceive is the lack of more voices on the communication channels, where we tend to see the same group of “loud” Reps talking most of the time and very little from the “quiet” ones, we should strive for everyone to have a voice and promote asynchronous communication channels a bit more.

  • The management of a sheer number of the people involved in this program can be difficult at times, considering the difference in their contribution interests based on the geographical locations.

  • Being a part of this program, I feel that the recognition system was not able to scale with reps program. It’s time to walk ahead with the current ROM system and find new innovative ways to recognise reps for their amazing contributions.

  1. 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?
  • Mozilla changes constantly, there are so many projects that start and then disappears that makes it very hard for us to be up to date. We have an information to create new events or to publicize product launches, but, what happens after that? Without continuity, we can’t engage or make new active collaborating members.

  • All the initiatives and campaigns should be planned to keep in mind the geographical diversity and differences in work cultures within Mozillians. Every Mozillian, no matter what his/her locations, the volunteers should be able to relate to the initiatives and treat them with the same passion and dedication as every other Mozillian around the world.

  • Moreover, communication can become a barrier sometimes when working on a level at which Mozilla works with all its contributors. We need to come up with solutions to smoothen the communication process.

  • We have the “ROM” but it is only awarded to super active reps and others may or may not be nominated for it. Personal contributions are rarely noticeable so the council should work on new structures where each and every rep can be appreciated for their individual contributions.

  • Having a plan where expectations are established in the short, medium and long term would help us to engage more easily in new collaborators, and establish clear roles to achieve the stated objectives within the planning. I believe, “ Plan is not important, planning is important.”

  1. What are the top three issues you want the Council to address in case you get elected? Why? How would you approach these issues?
  • Mozilla as a global community-

Why: Our community is a global entity. We come from different parts of the world, complete with different time zones, work cultures, education systems and different interests.

Approach: We should address this diverse community even more and should plan on strategies, campaigns, initiatives and functional activities based on this regional difference so that everyone can relate to them in a more generalized way.

For example: The Mozilla Activate campaign is on the right track of generating buzz to have people something interesting to work on, but I do believe that it can be improved in many ways. I am interested to learn and share regarding what’s the plan moving forward and look into ways to grow its appeal in the community.

  • Conflict Resolution Process

Why: Some communities have unresolved internal conflicts that demoralising for the new people to participate in the program. This translates into fewer active members in the communities and fewer opportunities to recruit new collaborators. Whether due to communication problems, not having the guidelines, or ignoring the code of conduct, it is important to have an action plan prepared to counteract that kind of issues and cease them in time to avoid further damages to individuals and to the community.

Approach : As leaders or mentors we could facilitate this process and have communication with the people who wish to form a resolution team, so the reps can be the bridge between the team of Community Guides and Council, to publicize what we are living, the ways to solve it and the different ways available to do it and to avoid escalation of the issues.

  • Reps Leadership Training

Why: Because our reps are our spokesperson to the world. Reps are already leaders/mentors in their communities. But we need to provide the proper tools and resources so that they can be even empowered more.

Approach: I would like to work on its efficacy. In the meantime, we need to be more aligned with the functional teams so that we can have some skill-based training in order to make the Reps program more effective.

For instance: We can hold some online training sessions or lightning talks with organization peers by inviting reps to participate.

  1. What are the specific qualities and skills that you have that you think will help you be an effective Council member?
  • Observation: This is one of the key quality I’d like to highlight in me which always helps me in identifying the problems but I will not stop there, once I know the problem I will start brainstorming towards the solutions. The most pleasant experience I got when we build the Mozilla Gujarat community from the scratch and now the community is recognised as a one of the strongest regional community in the Indian subcontinent. I am proud to be part of the team who contributed equally to initiated the community and leading it from remotely and onsite from where it is today.

  • Listening: When I was alone, instead of thinking that I was alone, I invested in self-development, what I would learn, and same I shared with people who joined us. Whenever I went to any universities/summit for talks/sessions, I was more curious to listen to enthusiastic attendees, moreover, I always look forward to hearing their plans, feedbacks, suggestions and much more. I believe these things always helped us to bring more energetic contributors to the community.

  • Innovative and adaptive: I always tried to be innovative and adaptive as much as possible, because a lesson I learned that you can’t to talk with the same pitch with everyone, you should be sometimes funny, interactive by the way you can engage your audience, by doing this you make the working environment healthy for all. I always tried to get the younger generation encouraged by sharing my learnings & experiences.

  • Mobilizing: The term means - ‘organize or prepare something’ so It is always a challenging task for setting up the program, motivating them to carry out activities. Guide them through various set of activities, training them. When you are dealing with a large number of volunteers one often comes across different mindsets, different ideas, different demands, glad that I was part of such programs where I learned a lot. So this experience has helped me to deal with any situation related to volunteers. Thus handling people, motivating them to carry some activity is easily done.The Mobilizing was then continued in the Rust activities, Campus club, Privacy & security and so on.

  • Coaching / Training: I believe in “Learn by Teaching ⇒ Training”. Also, being involved with Mozilla Foundation and #TeachTheWeb campaign for a long time, I have led many training workshops and sessions whose major focus was on spreading web literacy, emerging technologies and the importance of open web among the general audience. I have mentored and encouraged other Mozillians to spread knowledge and train others along the same lines as well.

  • Mentor: Being a volunteer, I have enjoyed working closely with the community, having the intention of helping and guiding new people; knowing that I can help them to collaborate and grow within Mozilla makes me feel good within the community. I believe I have good ability to listen to people, enlighten the path for the others and help them to find solutions to their problems. In case if I’m not able to solve it I I can guide them with the right person because I know that the main thing is collaboration and teamwork.

  1. Which of your contributions from the past 18 months had the biggest impact on the Reps program on a programmatic level?
  • Organizer of Maker Fest 2018 & 2017: Maker Fest is about developing a great maker community where people can learn and share about making. Creators, artists and hobbyist across the country are invited to present their contemporary applications of ideas using the vast ocean of art, science and technology.
  • Organizer of Rain Of Rust: Rain of Rust Campaign, a month-long global campaign specifically focused on the Rust language. It has taken place in June 2017 in collaboration with the Rust community. It was a successful campaign and was one of the featured campaigns of the year 2017.
  • Serving as Reps Resource to ensures that resources (budget and others) of the program are used in the most impactful way and according to the guidance provided by Mozilla’s strategy and the Council.
  • Rust Mobilizer: Increasing Rust outreach is one of the focused goals of the program this year. Our recent initiative such as RainOfRust, Rust Hacks enables people to learn, teach & adopt Rust globally.
  • Part of Mozilla India Panning Meetup 2016: The team responsible for making Mozilla India Meetup 2016. This event hosted by Mozilla India Community in India with people from different sub-communities based on gender diversity, regional representation, activities and leadership in the community.
  1. Which past achievement as a Rep would you tell your best non-Mozilla friend about?
  1. Not all Reps are using the reporting form to report their Reps activities. Why do you think that is?
  • There can be multiple reasons for the same.
  • Lack of communication from the Mentors on reports might discourage them but a continuous conversation between Coach-Mentee will keep them motivated to report their activities.
  • Based on my personal experience, some reps are not aware of reporting form and some don’t the understand the importance of reporting.
  • A very common reason, they may forget to fill the reporting form sometime.
  • Being a mentor I have always asked my mentees to reports their activities by sharing their blog reports, sometimes I’m commenting on the bug to remind them to fill the reporting form if I was cc’d to the respective bug.

P.S. Here are some feedbacks from my fellow Reps. Link: https://bit.ly/2GIe5ML

Thank you. :slight_smile:

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Before scrolling check out what inspires me about this opportunity here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omJCQFw6NLA

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

    • Strength: Our community involves – supporters, volunteers and staff ­­who form part of our biggest advantage. They give the program leverage to get things done with much more reach and ease.

    • Weakness: Program activities result in low return investment for our community growth due to volunteer mismatch between priority activities and areas where the program is investing in volunteer growth / strength.

  2. 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?

    • Mozilla community participation goals and ambitions are scaled and set at what a Mozilla employee can accomplish with access to all resources; volunteers then become burdened to reach and achieve these expectations but with less, sometimes with no access to resources.

      Here is an approach

    • Developed a structured approach to identifying and measure community activities based on ROI for volunteers from first moment, then set reasonable expectations based on level of each community development stage.

    • Mozilla Reps council together with the participation team must first adopt a bottom-up model that engages volunteers, reps and staff when drafting participation strategic plans.

    • Strengthen ability of regional communities and leaders to teach each other by empowering mozilla reps with leadership skills (e.g organise regional meet-ups for active community leaders, track progress and check KPIs etc)

    • Consider the possibility of having Mozilla staff (working on various projects of Mozilla) on ground, engaging with reps to identify community interests and engagements possibilities. This way everyone is fully engaged, updated and goals and needs of product teams are well meet.

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

    • Recognition: Expand and socialize Mozilla’s recognition toolkit to help Mozillians effectively recognize people for their contributions and deepen/extend relationships. In particular, focus on rebooting the open badges project for contributors.

    • Regional Participation Task Force: Establish task force of active leaders per region globally to report to Mozilla Reps council with expertise in modern approaches to community participation. These Task Force will be responsible for testing new approaches together with Mozilla reps in their regions. They are charged to develop a bold plan with concrete strategies for radically increasing the number and skill of volunteers actively helping bring more impact to the entire program and providing supporters and volunteers with value, including opening up doors to opportunities

    • Community Growth & Healthy Relationships: Engage Mozilla staff to collaborate with local and regional leaders on specific projects. This helps build healthy relationships between volunteers and staff while assisting them also to have access to resources and effectively execute their local events that align to Mozilla’s global strategic plan – for instance currently the “Insights team at Mozilla is working on “Internet Health Report v2” they can collaborate with regional leaders to gather feedback and help expand work in progress.

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

    • I believe I can bring real passion and energy to the council and our global community. I have a wide experience and strong background in building Mozilla communities and collaborating with global mozillians at various levels and projects. I have demonstrated this through my voluntary work for the past 6+ years with Mozilla and my determination to empowering individuals and communities to shape their own experiences in our community. My attitude has always been that if I am going to run for council seat, I should put every effort into it to help engage Mozilla communities in the global south, in order to succeed the entire Mozilla Reps program.
  5. Which of your contributions from the past 18 months had the biggest impact on the Reps program on a programmatic level?

    • I’m accepted in “Mozilla Leadership Program” and executing a community project that focuses on teaching dynamics of web literacy through community building and participation. The project has been featured for the eLife and Mozilla Global Sprint in UK, Cambridge.

    • I’ve coordinated Mozilla Africa bi-weekly calls, which aimed at connecting our community leaders in Africa by sharing their activities and learning from others to better lead their respective groups and build health relationships with volunteers.

    • I was part of the task team responsible for developing Africa’s regional strategic plan for Mozilla communities in Africa. This was done in collaboration with the participation team to help align Mozilla’s global activities with regional communities in order to increase community participation in Mozilla projects.

    • I attended both the Leadership Summit in Singapore, and I was invited for Mozilla Work Week in Whistler to collaborate with other community leaders and staff.

    • I’m mentoring one of our community leader who is currently in the process of being a Mozilla Rep for our community.

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

    • Successfully collaborated in the groundbreaking partnership with Orange and MTN in Sub-Saharan region to launch the first Firefox OS smartphone in 13 markets across the region. This commitment won Mozilla the Global Telecom Award - (Orange, TCL and Mozilla) - for the “KLIF smartphone rated as the most affordable smartphone).
  7. Not all Reps are using the reporting form to report their Reps activities. Why do you think that is?

    • Improve communication: Poor communication is a common problem between reps and their mentors. Sometimes reps who are using report dashboard never talk directly to those who create them. So there is need to put the two groups together and encourage a crowdsourcing approach to problems.

    • The reporting process is monotonous and boring, nobody cares to give feedback after Mozilla reps submit their reports, so why would people bother submitting reports for a driverless process. Council needs to ensure that they hold mentors accountable in this regards, Mentors need to get in touch with their mentees immediately after reporting, walk through their report together and understand better their activities, challenges and build rapport.

    • Reduce Time Spent on Reporting: This one also seems fairly obvious but it’s something that we’ve all been guilty of at one point or another. We can’t all be reps portal wizards, council should come up with strategy to build reporting templates. This is where we can save a lot of time by making use of our experts at MDN to build templates for us. Templates that are intuitive enough both on mobile and desktop to pretty much copy and paste data and the rest is auto-generated.

    • Reps council must treat reporting as a process, not an end in itself: Data collected should be used to actually help drive reps program a make better decisions.

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

The Reps Program’s biggest strength is in its privileged strategic position within Mozilla. An important bridging position between the board, staff, and volunteer communities.

Its biggest weakness is in its ability to sustain itself, through onboarding, branding, amplifying and inspiring new volunteers.

2. 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?

I don’t feel that the Reps Program is forward thinking enough in its focus. A lot of time and effort is spent retrospectively engaging to learn lessons from things we did weeks ago. To be truly effective we could be balancing this collaborative effort and joining together for more impactful global, collective, community campaigns surrounding areas of engagement like Internet Health. Adding our voices to provide greater human and empathic diversity in our messaging.

3. 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. Representing as LGBTQIA I wish for the Reps Program to more actively set targets for diversity, and transparently communicate how effective we are being in each of our communities on a regular timeline.
  2. I recognize the need for stronger recognition of exemplary efforts by people inside our communities. I wish to initiate a ‘Mozillian of the Week’ program, to allow Reps to amplify outstanding contributors and truly recognize we see these stunning people.
  3. Heavily focus on the already initiated onboarding reconstruction in alignment with Mozillians/Phonebook integration.

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

I bring a broad set of expertise:

  • customer service
  • training
  • people engagement
  • community building
  • strong empathy
  • transparency
  • process driven
  • future thinking
  • whipping up a Eurovision score sheet in minutes

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

I’m still inside my first year as a Rep, but I’ve not let that stop me from stepping in to shape our future. I’d initially focused on public facing workshops but I soon noticed our local needs as a community were being sidelined. Bringing new folks into a fractured structure was bound to be unsuccessful from the outset.

  • I’ve spent a considerable amount of hours getting feedback from fellow Mozillians:

    • identifying our priorities as a region.
    • building a long tail of events through to summer next year.
    • and reignited our collective enthusiasm.
  • I’ve been asked to be a Mozilla Festival space wrangler for the second year, in which will be my fifth year volunteering.

    • here I’ve spoken with Mozillians from across the globe.
    • brought in new alignments to our network.
    • helped support onboarding events.
    • but most importantly being there as a human being when people have needed someone to talk to or gentle words of encouragement and inspiration.

There’s still a lot of work yet to be done. Yet it won’t be in isolation as it builds on the strong work already sustained by fellow Reps, the Reps Council, and initiatives from inside Mozilla. From the integration of Phonebook and Mozillians.org, the addendum to the Mozilla Manifesto, the Community Participation Guidelines, a guiding light from Diversity & Inclusion, transparency when things go wrong.

  • My greatest focus has been on:
    • recognition and encouragement of people doing good.
    • flexibility in our approach.
    • encouragement for autonomy.
    • providing a roadmap through transparent planning, consistent momentum, and communication.
    • reducing gatekeeping in our community to allow for a more dynamic group voice and output.

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

Teaching 170 kids of the ages 7-11 some basics in A-Frame. Their energy was electrifying and I’ll always remember how privileged I’ve been to experience such an opportunity.

7. Not all Reps are using the reporting form to report their Reps activities. Why do you think that is?

Cognitively we mostly hate filling in forms. Retrospectively doing things takes a lot of energy. Heck I’m just as bad and have a week old report to fill right now. I don’t have a solution to this but I’d love to tackle the challenge. Anyone want to do mine for me?

My application video. Vote for the bald guy!

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

Mozilla Reps program in my own point view is about gathering different culture, abilities, religions, knowledge-background and interest together in one group, with the goal to promote one unify community “Mozilla”, by supporting, training and building local communities which include passionate people willing to learn more about Mozilla knowledge and promote Mozilla program/projects. the problem in this process that is not happening straightforward in some local communities, people cannot cope with the change sometimes and cannot embrace new decisions, because leaders in local communities gave up and we have a lack to keep people engaged while we are in the process of changing.

2. 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?

I won’t focus on Technical issues about Reps portal, there are two things I see are not working well in Reps program.
For some people think that Reps program is just about Mozillian plus ability or we can say power to ask for budget, which I don’t believe that’s why I became Reps a few years ago. so here I wanna point out that Rep’s mission or the purpose of being Reps is a bit misunderstood for some people, maybe when people apply to be Reps they should be questioned in a way we make sure they understand the goal of this program.

The other point mentors and reports, people are not reporting because they are not active or they are not doing contribution within a local community also mentors they are not reporting or doing any check-in for years with their mentee.
The relation (Mentor <-> Mentee) in the program itself it’s not working well for the people, it doesn’t mean not working 100% but the half of inactive people we see here KPI this could be one of the reason could decrease the number of inactive people if we tackle the issue. I would suggest an understanding, we need to gather how many inactive people per region and see their mentors and see if their mentors are active or not - I believe we do have inactive mentors but this fact will slow down the program and I think we should not.
I would use Community Analytics dashboard to study more the issue. we do have a great an important system we should use it for our benefits.

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

If I joined the Council group, I would focus more on two things Reps program and local communities issue.
For Reps program:

  • We need to list all the issues we can think of and priorities them,
  • We can rely to the Community Analytics dashboard to understand more which region and countries we need to focus in more
  • We can create surveys for Reps and survey should be in two categories for mentors and not mentor people. reporting from people every quarter would help if our solutions are working in the right way or not
  • We need to provide a clean Resource fro Reps program, we should update it in the wiki

Local Communities:

  • We need to make Reps living in the same country or region more connected with each others.
  • start from small circle: by encouraging inactive people and understand the kind of lack they facing
  • Encourage more leadership in local communities and have supervisors to make sure their leadership aligns with Mozilla goals and same for the local contribution.

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

I have never been a council before or mentor, I am just a Mozilla contributor for 5 years, I stepped on this opportunity because Mozilla Tech Speakers program gave me the chance to mentor people about public speaking, facilitate Monthly call and help newcomers.
Now I want to help Reps program using my little knowledge learn more from other councils and I believe I am good communicator.

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

I would say my contribution wasn’t focused just in Reps program, in the past 18 months I would say I was more focused on Mozilla Tech Speakers, and any Mozillian, spoke to people to encourage them more in contribution, tried to connect with regional communities, hear from them and see if I can help.

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

My past achievement, that I am still telling about for nowadays was a teaching program for disabled people how to code with web languages learning basics of HTML and CSS using webmaker tool “Thimble”

7. Not all Reps are using the reporting form to report their Reps activities. Why do you think that is?

People sometimes or usually don’t provide a slot of 15 minutes to fill in reports, it could be with the reason they don’t like writing, it could be with the reason they are not getting any feedbacks from their mentors about their reports and it could be with the reason they have not done community contribution for the past few months with the cause they were working on some Mozilla Functional group project. You cannot get all the Reps reporting monthly - it might happened at first but people don’t like routinely thing.

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Aloha! Final step of the Elections is here!

Take time and read all the answers, check the nominees’ reps profiles, their activity and the videos they created for this campaign!

After you are WELL INFORMED you can cast your vote here: VOTE HERE!

All answers and videos are linked here:

  1. Daniele Scasciafratte
  1. Pushpita Dey
  1. Edoardo Viola
  1. Faisal Aziz
  1. Umesh Agarwal
  1. Mehul Patel
  1. Oarabile Mudongo
  1. Irvin
  1. Hossain Al Ikram
  • withdraw
  1. David Ross
  1. Manel Rhaiem

Happy Voting!

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