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.
