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 - #4 by rowdymehul
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 actionEfforts 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 goingInvolve 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 etcData 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 feedbackSocial 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 organizationReps 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.