[IMPORTANT] ⚠️ Council Elections - Spring 2019 - Nominee Q&A

Hey all,

This is the second step into the Election Process . In this thread the 8 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 April 7th, 23:59 UTC (edited, was previously: April 7th, 06:00 UTC). Note that this is mandatory.

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

The 8 nominees are:

Thanks in advance, looking forward to your answers!

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Hello everyone! I’m Felipe (@felipez3r0) from Jaboticabal / São Paulo - Brazil.
I’ll do a quick presentation about myself for those who don’t know me: I’m a professor, right now I’m doing a Master’s in Education and Formative Process (I’m researching about Open licenses and open educational resources) also, I’m a Web developer.

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

About the questions:

A: Our biggest strength: Our reach, we have a lot of Reps and Reps in a lot of different regions of the world.
Our biggest weakness: Sometimes the information doesn’t get delivered to everybody (or because of our diverse group the information can be misunderstood), we have a vast network of Reps and sometimes we can keep in touch closely with everyone.

A: This is a hard question, I don’t see anything that is currently “not working well” in the Mozilla Reps program, something I would love (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: I don’t know if I can list three issues, but for me, the top priority is improving the image of Reps Program inside and outside of Mozilla, I’m a mentor in the Open Leaders Program, during one of the past cohorts someone from Mozilla said to me: “I never have heard about Mozilla Reps and how the program works” (I know that Mozilla is a huge company, but I believe we can discuss and try to improve how we could “sell” our images better inside and outside of the company).

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 onboard is vital to the community health (we had some plans to build an onboarding process to the Brazilian community)

Another important topic is conflict resolution, during a year we implemented a Conflict Resolution Committee here in the Brazilian community to solve internal problems and to share initiatives trying to improve the community health in general. You can find more about this committee in this Discourse category (pt-br) (https://discourse.mozilla.org/c/mozilla-brasil/resolucao-de-conflitos).

A: As I said in my brief presentation I’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: The Conflict Resolution Committee ended in 2017, so I’ll add here as my recent most significant impact contribution: 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).

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

Thanks for the opportunity! :smiley:

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Hi Reps, I’m Irvin, the current Council member that seek to be re-electioned.

Here I had collect some of my previous works as member of Council in this article,

You can also check my last year’s election Q&A and video here,

Here is my answer to the questions. Some of them may be the same answer as a year ago, and some would be difference according to my previous year’s experience as Council member.


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, experiences, and interests.

    We are a diverse community formed together to fight for the same goal - internet’s health and opportunity. This enable us to discuss, plan, work, and review in many different point of views. This prevent us from falling into single voice scenario.

    Whenever anything is broken inside the program, there are always someone also from Reps can point it out and urge us to fix it together.

  • Weakness - Lack of resources (time of volunteer & full-time staff) to keep engaging and motivating a long-time participation. We’re losing motivate with the time pass while people leave the program. Some people still contribute, with or without Rep program seems less different nowadays.

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?

  • 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 or report less.

    That prevent us from knowing how many Rep are still active. It’s hard to evaluate the current status of Rep program if we don’t know the accurate numbers.

    Perhaps that’s because report procedure is frustrated that need to choose from 3 lists of activities, initiative and contribution area. Many options are outdated and feel not easy to suggest or remove some categories from the list.

    My solution is,

    • periodic check with those Rep who are not active with the help of new in-active status dashboard. (I’d been work for this for a while, check GitHub issue #345, #348, #362, #375)

    • Encourage people to keep discuss and suggest new options for columns in event report on discourse (which also WIP at here)

  • BTW, I still feel event check-in system is not working well, as in my previous year’s answer. I may able to start dealing with it in my next term.

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. After Firefox OS / Webmaker period, some Rep feel less motivated due to lack of projects to work. My solution is, help Rep find next focus with the info from weekly tl;dr newsletter that can help them get closer with Mozilla-verse, raise motivation of Rep by encourage them to take the mentoring role of local volunteer community to work on new projects.

  2. Rep is less visible in Mozilla-verse. My solution is help Rep who doing well to be more visible with Mozillian of Month campaign. Help Mozillian to learn about them and their following local volunteers.

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

  • As a member of really-old local community (formed before Firefox 1.0), I think we connecting East-Asia region community pretty well. We keep supporting other community that has similar background, culture and language by sharing our experience and help bridge resources.

  • Rep as a leadership role of mission driven Mozillian, we should encourage all rep to help mentoring local community volunteer and bridge cross-region communities to share the experience.

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 15 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 influencer” of Mozilla Summit 2013 (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.

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Hello Friends,

I am Shahid Ali Farooqui from Indian. I am currently working at Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Kolkata, India. Prior to my current assignment, I worked for IIT Bombay as Research Fellow.

I joined as Reps in year 2011. served as Council Members two year ago. I am currently Mentor of the Reps Program. Mentor of various Regional communities, mentor of various FOSS initiatives etc.

I am a Community Builder and a FOSS activist. I love to use and promote FOSS. I am part of FOSS promotion drive in our country. I was part of “Spoken Tutorial” Project at IIT Bombay. As part of the project, we used to create and promote FOSS tutorials which includes tutorials on Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird. Using spoken tutorials, we use to conduct workshop on various FOSS system across country.

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

Ans: Strength: Strong and Big Community of volunteers spread across world.
Weakness: Lack of communication and clear vision to retain such an awesome community.

Q.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?

Ans: Reps Program is failing to retain the enthusiasm of the community due to many reasons. As a result, size of the community is continuously decreasing for last 2-3 years. I think, I should be able to bridge the gap, boost their enthusiasm to re-initiate the community. As I mentioned in both the town-halls that proper communication is missing in the program, we are failing to give the directions to the volunteers. Reps program has failed to communicate the priorities of the Mission Driven Moziilians among the Reps/Mozillians. My very first approach will be to talk with people and to give a fair try to bridge the gaps.

Q.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?

Ans: 1. I would like to improve the communication among the community and would like to bridge the gap and boost the enthusiasm of the community members.
2. I would like to focus on building/improving regional communities, and bring back volunteers from Alumni to main stream.
3. I would like to tryout and work on various models to restructure the community. Collecting feedback/suggestions/input will help to move ahead.

Q.4: How do you believe you can support regional community health? - Can this be applied to Reps program too?

Ans: Regional communities are the backbone of the Reps Program. I would rather say that regional communities are the pillars of Reps Program. Each and every volunteer is an integral part of the Reps Program. Since, I work closely with various regional communities, with various groups of functional areas etc. I am well aware about the health of various regional communities.

Q.5: What are the specific qualities and skills that you have that you think will help you be an effective Council member?

Ans: My skill sets like community building, outreach, communication etc will help me to be an effective council member.

Q.6: Which of your contributions from the past 18 months had the biggest impact on the Reps program on a programmatic level?

Ans: As I mentioned, I work closely with various regional communities, I am more into community building and always focus on to reach more and more people to speared the word. I am in process of preparing a list of things to work on in next 2-3 months, which includes meetings with my mentees and mentor. More events based on priorities of the Mission Driven Projects, spreading words etc will help to engage more people in the Reps Program.

Q.7: Which past achievement as a Rep would you tell your best non-Mozilla friend about?

Ans: I am part of a most active FOSS community of the world. I served as Council Members two year ago. I am currently Mentor of the Reps Program. Site host for Mozilla Summit 2013 held on SFO, USA.
Mentor of various Regional communities, mentor of various FOSS initiatives etc.

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Hello Reps,
I am Mayur. I am currently a part of the Council, was a replacement until this election. I seek to be re-electioned to continue working on the things I am currently working on. Most of my Q&A align with my last Q&A. [IMPORTANT] ⚠️ Council Elections - Autum 2018 - Nominee Q&A

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

Strength:

Passion
Many Reps are emotionally attached to Mozilla and its mission (Mission Driven Mozillians). Which is our core strength. No matter what, reps are always trying to help mozilla in any way possible.

Easily adaptive
Reps are capable and flexible enough to carry out any activity. They are always excited for participation in new experiments and activities.

Community that never sleeps
We are always active. Our community has global presence, we are present in almost all the time zones. In short Reps Program is audible to the world 24*7. This has helped us in our past online campaigns like Net Neutrality, Encryption, Activate Mozilla and more.

Weakness:

Communication gap
There is communication gap between all the entities in the program (Council, Mentor and mentees). This is affecting the coordination between the three groups.

Challenge to stay updated
It is a challenge to stay updated with the focus and priority changes of mozilla and the reps program. A small Inactivity can make a volunteer misinformed.

Volunteers wait for further steps
Our volunteers rely on the program to provide them with campaign and contribution pathways. This dependency results in irregular momentum.

Our efforts weren’t enough for retention of members
In recent times lot of good reps have left the program. I feel our efforts were not enough to retain them back. Experienced and skilled member leaving is a loss to our program.

Less / incomplete orientation for new / potential reps
New and potential Reps are the building blocks for the Reps program. They are ones who will be leading things in the future. Proper orientation with the clear information about current OKRs will lead to a strong foundation of the reps program. The existing reps should pass on the knowledge and experience to the new generation. As Mozilla has a complex ecosystem it will take time for any newcomer to get familiar with the system.

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?

No accurate data: The program is still unable to identify the exact number of reps who are contributing, their activities and other useful information. We are unable to identify what are the expertise of each of our reps.

Volunteers are unable to cope with the changes :
Inactivity of reps for few weeks can create communication gap. Most of the volunteers in the community are mission driven mozillians and they do not contribute to code or any other technical contribution. As council is exploring different activities for the MDM. Plus lot of focus areas are changing, the transition is causing confusion and the lack of activities in the mission driven mozillians is leading to loss of momentum.

Update everyone with everything:
Too much reading, everything is documented but still we are unable to update reps about everything. We know our reps struggle with time and have limited time for their contribution.

Fun elements & momentum in the community :
During the transition, it is very difficult to keep the momentum going on. So many things are changing. Even the council needs time to figure out and set things for the reps. As the progress in the transition, the council and peers are already planning activities inline with the latest OKRs which will bring the fun element leading to momentum back in action

Efforts to reactivate inactive Reps - Need to make most active :
As I said in the Townhall call our program is not 8 years old, we are just 8 years experienced. But unfortunately not every rep is active. Future activities needs involvement of the experienced volunteers. I wish to help council on this.

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

This aligns with what I am working on as the current council member. I wish to continue working upon it.

Create contribution opportunities for the Mission Driven Mozillians -Re-commitment:
We as a council also figured it out that we need more value addition contribution from our Mission driven mozillians. This is why we are pushing important campaigns that are adding value to Mozilla and its products. In the upcoming months we need to take steps to reactive reps, onboarding & mentoring of the new mozillians. We need to mobilize them to the right projects they want to contribute to. A little help can place a right volunteer to a right task.

Comms: ( Ways to update Reps )
The reps council has figured out that- New communication strategies using discourse posts, newsletter, blogs can help lot of reps to get updated with the latest happenings in Mozilla and program. We are continuously pushing campaign, council workflow, Mission driven
mozillians updates. We only need to keep this momentum going

Involve Reps in various roles:
Recently council has already involved reps into its core work the onboarding team, review team, newsletter team, etc. In future we look upon involving them in the campaigns team, social media team, marketing team etc

Data driven decisions :
We as council have started taking decision based upon numbers. Few months back council had a brainstorming session on Reps Data. This data has helped us identify NDA missing reps, Mozillians profile missing reps, Last logins to the reps portal to check Inactivity. Further working on this would result in better reporting system. Advance tools can be implemented in the reps ecosystem. One of the advancement in this Mozilla community analytics.

Coaching/Leadership:
Coaching can help volunteers get aligned with the program goals and effective leadership can help volunteer reach out to those goals. Good coaching can lead to quality contribution and Good leadership can lead to quality community. Few of the reasons why we as council has started to have mandatory onboarding courses for reps and mentors.

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

  • As I said in the townhall call we should promote Reps Program as a Movement and not a program. Movement to make a change.

  • The major reason why regional communities are getting inactive is that they are unable to cope up with the change in the program. A well updated community is a healthy community. We need a strategy to update & align all entities within the reps program (Mentor, mentee, council)

  • New mission, new goal can add new excitement and enthusiasm. Value added contribution is something that can reactive most of members.

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

Marketing :
I was part of the engagement team 1 for more than 3 years. We have worked upon many marketing strategies for FSA program, Firefox, Firefox OS, Firefox for Android, Firefox for IOS etc. I have also led many advocacy campaigns for Mozilla. Managed social media account for Mozilla. I work with the community development team on beta of group identities. Program Influence can be increased by redesigning few marketing strategies.

Mobilizing :
When we had the FSA program mobilizing them was one of the important task. Setting up campus program, motivating them to carry out activities. Guide them through various set of activities, training them. When you are dealing with large number of volunteers you come across different mindsets, different ideas, different demands. And 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 Firefox OS promotional activities, Campus club, Privacy Advocacy activities etc.

Leadership :
Listening to community members for their thoughts and grievances, making them feel comfortable with the workflow and saying ‘Thankyou’ or ‘you did a great job’ is something I have close experience in. Being the FSA E-Board I have had my fair chances of improving my skills at this. Well motivated community can be very productive if they are channelized property to the right resources.

Well updated with Council working style and flow:
I have been part of the council a couple a times. I am well aware with process and working style of the council. I am also aware with the Current ORKs. From Day 1 I can directly start working on any task.

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

These are some of the contribution on programmatic level only

Deactivating mailing service (not a big task though) :
After the GDPR council took a decision to move our newsletter to the discourse. This step ensured that we kept the volunteer data safe.

Update Interests, Activities and Functional Areas on the portal :
The idea was to study and update the Interests, Activities and Functional Areas on the report system with in the reps portal and removing the old one and adding new.

The involvement of a Council member in the Campaigns design :
My task as a council member was to help the campaigns team with the following

*Campaigns Idea
*Reviewing comms for the campaign. Modifying the content from the volunteers point of view
*Recording and editing instruction videos
*Publishing updates on the social channels and mailing list
*Update council and peers with the progress
*Reviewing the feedback

Social rebranding :
Updating the new reps logo on all our existing online platforms. Task was to identify different platform and the resource person who can help get it resolved. For this I also needed to take support from the participation system team.

Drafting and Publishing the Newsletter :
My task was to coordinate with the newsletter team

*Coordinating with the Newsletter team
*Host monthly call with the team
*Pass Council Updates to team
*Help drafting content
*Getting content reviewed from the Council
*Make announcement on Discourse
*Post Newsletter
*Check Performance (e.g.: How many reps viewed the newsletter)

Reps Branding - Mozilla projects reach out to Reps as gateway to community. Helped Yofie with the research. Research on how mozilla reps successfully partnered with different entities in creating good impact.

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

Aadhaar campaign in India :
As a part of the community development team, we ran pan India Aadhaar campaign. In which the Indian Mozilla Community helped Mitchell Baker by signing the open letter and raise their voices & concerns about data protection within the Aadhaar system. We were able to plan, execute the campaign and reach our goal in limited time frame.

Being a part of net neutrality campaign in India as a Rep coordinator :
Lot of reps actively participated in this campaign. This was a successful campaign because we were able to make our voices reach out to the Government. Eventually they took strong actions by blocking Net neutrality violating service like zero-rating.

Privacy Month Campaign :
This campaign was totally a community led initiative. Many global communities participated in it. One of the best examples of good coordination and communication between different communities. This campaign was featured by Stay safe online organization

Reps volunteering for MozFest :
This was the first time where Mozilla reps where volunteering for each space at mozfest. Each space wrangler was assigned with few reps, these reps helped them manage the space activities.

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Hello all,

I am Vishal and I have been a Mozilla Rep since 2014, and since then, I have had the pleasure of being a part of some amazing initiatives which had a global impact with respect to community participation. The Reps program has helped me grow in a lot of ways. I feel it is my time to give back to the program and contribute into shaping it further.

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

Strengths -

  • Mozilla Reps in itself is a very unique program with a diverse group of people with different skill-set and interests coming from all around the world, but with a common goal and passion towards Mozilla’s Mission.

  • For someone who has deeper understanding about the Mozilla Mission and it’s direction, Mozilla Reps are a best fit for Community Coordinators.

  • Also it gives a platform where any Mozillian who becomes a Rep feels a sense of empowerment and starts contributing with renewed energy.

Weakness -

  • Less mentors - There is a need of more mentors in the program to help newer reps grow.

  • Scale - Sometimes, a program’s strength is also it’s biggest weakness. The sheer number of the people involved in this program can be difficult to manage at times, considering their contribution interests based on the geographical locations.

  • Communication - Proper communication of updates has always been an issue in the Reps program. This needs to be taken care of to ensure maximum interaction.

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?

  • Geography - All the initiatives and campaigns should be planned keeping in mind the geographical diversity and differences in work cultures. Every Mozillian, irrespective of location should be able to relate with the initiatives and should treat them with the same passion and dedication as every other around Mozillian around the world. Council can have region-wise surveys / online meetups to know and understand issues and differences in communities. This will help them reach out to communities on a more personal level and people will feel more attached.

  • Communication - Proper communication and communication channel is still a concern. Most of the Reps are not able to connect with regular updates about the Reps community and that from the Council. This in turn leads to sense of detachment and loss of participation.

  • Mentor - Mentee Relationship - Reps program is in transition phase, and a lot of things have changed. But previously in the Reps program, there was frequent interaction between a mentor and mentee. This somehow has reduced drastically since. Switching to the old mentor-mentee system, newer reps will get more attention from their mentors and can be sustained better.

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

  • Outreach - More participation will lead to more outreach. We need to work on getting more people involved into the reps program. It would also be helpful in addressing the gender equality problem to a certain extent. An inclusive strategic outreach should help with getting more gender equal participation in reps program.

  • Communication - Communication gap due to Mozillians being unaware of newer communication channels. A gap between Council and Reps, a gap between Mentor and Mentees, a gap between Reps and Mozillians around them. A majority of reps fail to get updates about the current direction of Mozilla mostly because they miss out on monthly meetings and emails. I think this is a key issue on which I can help the council to work on.

  • Engaging Participation - Reps Program is ever-changing. There are a lot of new people who are getting involved in the Reps program each day, and there a some who lose touch for some days and come back to a big question mark. We can come up with a site just like whatcanidoformozilla.org for Reps. Interactivity is always engaging.

  • Mozilla as a global community - Our community is a global entity. We come from different parts of the world, complete with different timezone, work cultures, education systems and different interests. Council 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.

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

  • As stated previously, effective communication has a lot to do with maintaining the interest of Mozillians. For any community to be healthy, there should be two-way communication.

  • More and more people should be encouraged to take up leadership roles. This is very important because it helps share responsibilities within the communities, as well as make them feel more involved.

  • Recognition is one of the most motivating factors in any community. Bringing initiatives such as “Rep of the Month” or “Mozillian of the Month” to a regional level can be possible. This will also help find more Mission Driven Mozillians regionally.

  • When communities focus on Mission and productivity, the chances of conflicts minimizes to a large extent.

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

  • Experience - I have been a part of the Mozilla Community for about 6 years now. I feel, my experience with Mozilla and a general understanding of the council’s way of working with OKRs and MDM is an asset and would help me to strategize and plan solutions to key issues not just with the community, but also with various projects.

  • Coaching / Training - Being involved with the Reps program, Mozilla Open Leaders and other significant campaigns for a long time, I have led many training workshops and sessions whose major focus was on spreading web literacy and the importance of online Privacy, to the general audience. I have had the privilege to mentor and encourage other Mozillians to spread knowledge and train others.

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

  • Was a part of the Onboarding Screening Team 2018. This was the first ever Onboarding team with new rules setup by the Council after an experimental run a year prior.

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

  • Privacy Month Campaign - A Global campaign which focuses on educating people about the importance of online Privacy in their daily lives, and why it matters. This campaign has a great online presence on social media reaching out to millions of people around the world. Started in January 2016, this campaign still has significant involvement within and outside the Mozilla community.

  • Featured Rep Of the Month - Contributing to the above campaign, I was featured Rep of the Month in February 2017.

  • Net Neutrality Campaign - This was a crucial campaign at the time, because there were plans to introduce certain services into the Indian market which would violate Net Neutrality. Mozilla Reps had an active part in encouraging people to raise their voices and sign petitions towards the government.

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Hello amazing Reps,

I am Prathamesh and I am one of the Reps election nominees.
I was a part of the Reps Council a year back and I had shared my experience by writing a blog :
A year as a Mozilla Reps Councilman

I am looking forward to this elections and I am sharing my thoughts below.

  • What is, in your own view, the Mozilla Reps program’s biggest strength and weakness?
    Strength : I believe that Mozilla Reps are the individuals who are full of passion. A diverse collaboration to build an open web is the biggest strength of the Mozilla Reps program.
    Weakness : I think that the Inactivity of most of the Reps is one of the weaknesses of the program. I am of the opinion that this weakness could be overcomed with a proper communication and feedback mechanism.

  • 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 believe that the following things might need a bit of a push :
    Communication
    :black_small_square: Solution :
    • Creating more opportunities within the Reps Newsletter team for other Reps to contribute and share the reports regarding their personal/community activities.
    • A Podcast series featuring Reps activities across the globe can also help to improve the communication gap within the community and could also be seen as a new way of knowing things
    Reporting system
    :black_small_square: Solution :
    • The reporting system on the Reps portal could be made more dynamic
    • Encouraging Mentor-Mentee meetups and community Mozcafes can also add efficiency in reporting activities and also help to bridge the gap in communications
    Visibility/Recognition
    :black_small_square: Solution :
    • Exploring the possibility of adding LinkedIn recommendations or Letter of recognition for the Rep’s activities can not just recognize the Reps activity within the program but can also add more visibility globally.
    Opportunities for new contributors and Reps
    :black_small_square: Solution :
    • Work closely with the teams to improve the existing documentation and explore the possibilities in various projects where the Reps can contribute.

  • What are the top three issues you want the Council to address in case you get elected? Why? How would you approach these issues?
    Communications
    :black_small_square: Communications is the backbone of the Reps program.
    :black_small_square: The existing communication model needs to be centralize and new ideas can be rolled on top of the existing ones.
    Reporting system
    :black_small_square: Encourage Reps to organize online/offline meetups with the community/task group to share knowledge/news, collect feedback and report the current health of the community/project.
    Recognition
    :black_small_square: Highlighting the Rep’s efforts in the form of tweets, emails, shoot-outs and recommendations can make the Rep more visible within the community.

  • How do you believe you can support regional community health? - Can this be applied to Reps program too?
    ◦ As mentioned in my above answers, I believe that the Rep is representing a community/project and the communications and reporting systems can help recognize a Rep which in turn can add to the success of the Rep and the community.

  • What are the specific qualities and skills that you have that you think will help you be an effective Council member?
    ◦ I feel that I have very strong Leadership, strategic innovative perspective and good communication qualities with ‘Ready to help’ approach which helps me to understand any issue and come up with a solution/fix. 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 have been managing swags for the Reps in India and have been helping them logistically with the event requirements.
    ◦ Apart from logistics, I have been mentoring Reps to achieve volunteer engagement and contributor success.

  • Which past achievement as a Rep would you tell your best non-Mozilla friend about?
    ◦ I was a part of the Mozilla Reps council a year back and have been speaking about Open Source technologies and guiding students and professionals in the Open Source world since a long time.

Looking forward to your feedback :slight_smile:

~ Prathamesh

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Hola! My name is Yuli from Mexico, i´m frontend engineering, i joined as Reps in year 2016, I am a volunteer since 2014. Currently I participate as a TechSpeaker, and I’ve participated in some firefox campaigns, with my local community. I am part of Women Who Wode Mexico City, where we create activities so that more women get involved in STEM.

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

Strength: The program has a lot of potential and a great reach within the community, it can reach commited people who then acquire responsibility and manage to position themselves as local referents; the people who become Reps are moved for the pleasure of wanting to contribute to something they believe in, and offer their talent and dedication to the cause, which allows to have true leaders who can empower more people within Mozilla.

Weakness: Disorientation, sometimes one does not know what to do or how to participate, this is a common problem that as Reps we should work to solve. To take the role of a guide and help other volunteers grow within the community should be a role that every rep should play, but that something that doesn’t happen often. Being a Rep is more to just hold the title, it is our duty to take care of the community and help it grow with its members.

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 dissapear or start that makes it hard to be up to date. We have 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.

We have OKRs and we know our objectives, we just need to create a plan of how the community can help to achieve those goals.

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

Reps training
Although at this time to integrate as a new member to the Reps program, you need to take a series of webinars and a few extra steps, the program forgets the reps that are already registered on it. That’s why I see necesary to have a constant and continuous training program for these representants who have been giving their time to the organization. This would help to keep them updated and always be up to date on the new objectives of Mozilla, or how could they can integrate to new projects.

Reactivation
Work with the reps, obtaining information by region on the problems and situation in which their local community is located, and be able to create initiatives for the reactivation of members.

Visibility
Visibility program for reps and volunteers. The rep program of the month is good, but sometimes the vote can be won by who has more friends, is better known or the big community, there are communities that are very small and these people may not have the opportunity to become a rep of the month, work in a gamification program based on your reports and work.

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

Teamwork, all communities need a mentor to achieve our goals, this mentor becomes the person who motivates the community to continue participating. It is not necessary that it be only one, in the local community roles should be assigned among the reps that become the mentors of those areas and can help the process of onbording for new volunteers.

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

I do not have the experience of having been in a council before, what I can contribute is:

Diversity and inclusion: Working with women who code and the cohort women and open source, I have learned to work to create a more inclusive community, both with members and in the events that we organize.

Process for resolving conflicts: After going through some unfortunate events, I took on the task of investigating and seeing how we can avoid this type of conflicts within the communities and the follow-up that occurs with the people involved.

Mentor: In my time as a volunteer, I have enjoyed working closely with the community with the intention of helping and guiding new people; knowing that i can help them to collaborate and grow within Mozilla fills me and makes me feel useful within the community. I think I have good ability to listen to people, guide them and help them find solutions to their problems, if I do not have the experience to solve it, I know I can guide them with the right person, because I know that the main thing is collaboration and teamwork.

Mobilizer: I like to interact with people, organize activities with the community where I know we can reach more and I love creating alliances with other communities with wich we can work to achieve objectives together on technical or social issues where Mozilla strategically tries to work. I do a good networking and I encourage other mozillians to also become leaders of the projects that they are passionate about, giving them the tools that I have at my disposal and that I know that can make their work easier for them.

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

I have been collaborating with other local communities that have similar goals to our community.

I have participated with the local community in SUMO campaigns to help respond to users in the playstore.

We participate with the community in the Firefox video figth for you.

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

Create the community of Rust in Mexico, help make the community visible, make the first big workshop and part of the core team de rust was present, it is reason to create the communities of rust in Spanish, now the community of mexico is a big community and active.

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Hello my friends, I’m Luis A. Sánchez a.k.a @lasr21 I’m a Mozillian from Mexico City, :mexico:. I have been a volunteer since 2009, a rep from 2013 and was part of the 6&7th council some time ago (2013-2014).

During all this years I have been collaborating at different projects like Webmaker, Firefox OS, campusreps, L10n, SUMO, Moz Tech speakers and recently open leaders.

Our biggest strength in the program is the fact that during all this years we all have been working on this space where anyone passion about Mozilla and the open web can enter and have access to all the resources we have available.

For the “weakness” I prefer to think as a huge opportunity that we have to increase our geographically participation and boost the voices of all the quiet reps that have awesome ideas but for differents reasons their voices get lost.

I’m truly believe that all this time candidates would be be be a terrific council member, also that we should enable more new members of the council, my approach for this will be that if you want to run again for the council you must wait 1 term (1 year) in order to be a candidate again.

Geographical diversity of reps, if you see the reps map, there are some places where we don’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 it’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.

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.

After some hard lessons that our local community learn the hard way in the past I learn that sometimes despite our best efforts to keep everyone in peace is better to ask for help and contact the right person who can help dealing with this type of issues.

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.

The LATAM reps weekly call pilot was a great experiment where I serve as the host of one of the calls also helping with the one day events where the Mexico community get together and did an activity like the FFFY video, the dark funnel, SUMO days, etc…

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.

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