Last month our team got together in Toronto, Canada 
for a team meetup on Mozilla Communities Web Services (MCWS).
Mozilla Communities Web Services team (Tanner, Biraj, Geraldo, Majken, Cynthia, Yousef and Tom) at the CN Tower.
TL;DR
Following up on work done throughout the meetup, we
- discussed the Matrix implementation,
- discussed and drafted the migration offerings,
- onboarded team to manage the WPEngine platform,
- onboarded team to manage the GSuite platform,
- onboarded team to use and/or manage the Jira platform,
- discussed how we acquire/manage domains,
- discussed ownership of communities,
- understand the Mission Driven Mozillians and identified collaboration strategy,
- understand the newest plan and workflow of Identity and authentication management (IAM) at Mozilla,
- understand how our work is supporting the Open Innovation Products & Engineering Team
Lastly, we came out of the week with broad and deep shared understanding on how better support communities by offering web services solutions provided by Mozilla and managed by us, a community team aligned with a unique strategy.
Day 1
As people had to travel from many places in America, Europe and Asia to the team meetup we used day one to get to know each other and discuss and overviewing the Matrix.
Matrix
“Matrix is an open standard for interoperable, decentralised, real-time communication over IP. It can be used to power Instant Messaging, VoIP/WebRTC signalling, Internet of Things communication - or anywhere you need a standard HTTP API for publishing and subscribing to data whilst tracking the conversation history.” [Link]
We are highly interested in run a homeserver for use throughout our community, and here we begin beyond a discussion, overview in the project, and also some boards in our Matrix Working Group to get it setuped.
Day 2
Migration Offerings
Over the years our team has provided services to communities in different ways using platforms and different management methods, currently new services and platforms are available, the highlights are:
- Google GSuite
- WPEngine
- Domains
This means that we will encourage communities to migrate to new platforms and services by offering them migration.
Domains
We discuss how domain requisitions work for communities and projects, and we will also create policies and SOPs for requests soon.
Mission-Driven Mozillians
Lucy introduced us the Mission-Driven Mozillians where we are happy to collaborate since MCWS actually has some historical knowledge of doing something like this, as part of our process of granting resources.
Day 3
Ownership
We are happy to process service requests for Mozilla communities around the world, whether they represent a country or a region in a country, but how to validate and inform communities of requests made and validate that they are for the common good of whole community? We will work on it getting advice from experts and specially an ownership agreement.
WPEngine
WPEngine is our solution for community blogs they provides managed WordPress hosting for mission critical sites around the world, and also amazing support and optimized for WordPress.
Our team get paired to ensure that everyone is aligned on how the platform works, how to manage WP Multisite and ensure that all settings are well made and correctly meet the needs of the communities, in addition we document our technical procedures to do this.
GSuite
often communities around the world need more services than a domain and blog, they may need email services and reliable storage that can support them in more difficult tasks in a professional manner. Your community can get a sub-organization in our GSuite account and extend the services offered to better support the work of your community.
Our team had the opportunity for an overview of how GSuite Admin works and how best to configure to better support community work.
Day 4
Jira
The Jira software is the home of our tracking and management of services provided for communities, we make sure all team have access and get onboarded to use our main management tool.
Identity and authentication management (IAM)
Yousef make sure we understand the newest plan and workflow of Identity and authentication management (IAM) at Mozilla. Check Mozilla’s identity and access management (IAM) initiatives for details.
Open Innovation Products & Engineering Team
Henrik check-in into our Vidyo room at the end of the day to talk about his work at Mozilla, Open Innovation Products & Engineering Team strategy and how our work impacts communities and supports his team work.
Day 5
This was everyone’s day when they left for their countries, but while the check-in time at the airports was not approaching we took time to discuss, continue to learn a little bit more on how Jira works and do other related work and say goodbye to the team.
Check our meeting notes (shout out for Majken who make all them) to get more details of discussion and future tasks/work mentioned here.
Cheers,
Geraldo Barros
on behalf Mozilla Communities Web Services team