Mozilla Speaker Series

We’ve posted our speaker lineup for Q1 - the headlines:

  • The Right Way To Build Software: Ideals over Ideology with Jocelyn Goldfein, former Director of Engineering, Facebook + VMWare
    [Host: Nick Nguyen] - Wednesday, January 27 @Mozilla MV - 10am PT / 1pm ET / 6pm UTCBuilding
  • Product with Partners with April Underwood, VP Platform at Slack
    [Host: Bertrand Neveux] - Thursday, February 25 @ Mozilla SF - 10am PT / 1pm ET / 6pm UTC
  • The Role of a Product Manager - Everything and Nothing with Josh Elman of Greylock VC
    [Host: Justin Crawford] - Wednesday, March 23 @ Mozilla SF- 10am PT / 1pm ET / 6pm UTC:

Details on how to attend these here.

A refresher on the Series:

In 2015, Internal Communications invited 8 speakers from outside of Mozilla to share ideas and best practices on key themes tied to our work to Build our Core, Grow our Influence and Prototype the Future.

And while we thought the speakers offered provocative and insightful content, you voted by your attendance: on average each speaker attracted 170 folks across our spaces, 127 remote live streams and 281 additional playback views.

This, your feedback, and various stories of how the speakers directly impacted your work validated this effort. So we’ll work to improve the Series in 2016. A bit more on what we’re thinking and a quick recap of the Series to date are below.

Let us know what you think, send us your speaker suggestions, and invite your friends to these public events. Teaser: if you’ve ever wondered, wrestled with or debated over the best way to release Firefox,
you’ll probably be interested in our January 27 talk.

Diane

The 2015 Speaker Series Recap:

Top Ranked Speaker + Most Livestreams Tom Chi @ 172 livestreams
A few YVRers planned a trip to the local DMV to apply Tom’s methods.

Largest In-Space Attendance Hiten Shah @ 220 attendeesHiten’s talk on Growth Hacking
inspired some of our marketers to find the users that love us and ask them why. The work led to a study that will help inform our Product and Brand strategy in 2016.

Most Playbacks Deanna Zandt @ 552 playbacks (by a longshot) Deanna schooled us in not being jerks online. It takes some work.

Speaker Inspiring Change Kate Heddleston - Since giving her talk on the benefits of onboarding, we’ve implemented a few onboarding programs across Mozilla.

Upcoming Changes:

  • Branding. We’re losing the name “brantina” (Breakfast in PST + Cantinas in Europe) because some folks want to watch these apart from a cantina. We respect that.

  • Day and Time. Stellar events are the love child of logistics. We heard from some of you that 9am PT / 4pm UTC is a great time to get in that last call with Europe. Rather than interfere, we’re getting out of the way, adjusting the start time by an hour. We’ll also play with what day of the week we do these for folks with standing meetings.

  • Curriculum Some of these talks are chock full of things you can apply to your job,
    today. To help you do that, we’re going to work with Mozilla Learning folks to develop some actionable curriculum for these. Rumor has it a prototype will be live at this month’s Participation Leadership Summit.

  • Beyond the Bay Area. We tested holding a talk in London last quarter in between Speaker Series events; we are looking at more ways to integrate speakers from around the globe this year. Send your ideas this way.

References:
AirMozilla Channel
Wiki

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NEXT SPEAKER - JAN 27TH

Mozillians,

Take a stroll with me down memory lane, if you will. The year was 1998. A young computer science major named Nick had just finished a winter co-op in balmy Rochester, MN and was so scarred by the experience that he was going to take both the LSAT and MCAT in an attempt to escape technology. On a lark he managed to get an interview at a boutique enterprise software firm in Austin, TX- Trilogy. (A place where John Lilly, Schrep, and Janet Swisher all worked, thus confirming my suspicion that I exist in a memory-limited simulation)

The interviews were tough, but one that stood out was a session with a rock star 24 year old engineering manager named Jocelyn Goldfein. She told me lots of exciting things about her relatively short but illustrious career, and I was very excited to land the internship. You might even say she had a hand in keeping me out of the legal or medical professions! The net-net is that even back then she was a boss, and with senior level engineering stints at VMWare and Facebook, she has plenty of useful stories to tell about her time doing engineering and engineering leadership under intense pressure. And we have her coming to Mozilla to share those stories!

If you care about how software is made, particularly at other places, you’ll find her talk educational AND entertaining. Seems like a good use of your time.


The Deets:

  • Location: Mozilla Mountain View + Air Mozilla
  • Date & Time: Wednesday, January 27th @ 10am PT / 1pm ET / 6pm UTC
  • Topic: The Right Way to Build Software: Ideals Over Ideology

Add-ons. Advertising. Dogfooding. Email clients. Mozillians form strong opinions on all sides of these (and other) topics, often for legitimate reasons.

We’re not alone. Leading software firms such as VMWare and Facebook also grapple with contentious technology and process issues, and Jocelyn Goldfein has firsthand experience of this. She’s led engineering teams building software for both consumers and the enterprise; apps and the web; and for license fees and for free. These teams are like us: they debate how to best release software - and a host of other issues. Drawing from these experiences, Jocelyn will provide frameworks for how Mozilla can navigate these discussions effectively to drive better outcomes.

  • Speaker: Jocelyn Goldfein has held senior engineering leadership roles spanning from high-growth companies like VMware and Facebook to small startups. She is a widely recognized industry spokesperson on scaling engineering operations, mobile engineering, and diversity in tech. Goldfein currently is an independent angel investor and advisor to startups. As Director of Engineering at Facebook she led Facebook’s push on mobile infrastructure and quality, initiating major new investments in architecture and tooling and helped guide Facebook’s transition to “mobile first.” She launched new product initiatives in search, news feed, and photos. She also drove strategic engineering operational initiatives, including overhauling Facebook’s approach to technical recruiting. More on Jocelyn at her website.
  • Host: Nick Nguyen
  • Questions: Submit questions for Jocelyn during the event on IRC #AirMozilla. Hashtag: #brantina

Everything here is exciting! Whoohoo! :tada:

Follow - up:

We kicked off 2016 with a record number of live streams. Guess we’re keen to understand the Right way to build software.

-> Tell us what you thought and suggest future speakers here on discourse!

-> Intrigued but missed it? Check out the archived stream.

-> See you next month on Thurs Feb 25, when our very own Bertrand Neveux will grill April Underwood, Slack’s Head of Platform, on Building Products With Partners @ Mozilla SF + Air Mo.**

NEXT SPEAKER SERIES!

The next Speaker Series session is coming up on Thursday, Feb 25 and this month’s topic is… PARTNERS

They’re sometimes a bit of a challenge for Mozilla, aren’t they? Because they want to influence the product roadmap to meet their specific interests. Because concepts of privacy, security or openness of the web are often lower priorities for them than we’d like. Because
some of them represent the giant corporates we’re precisely trying not to be. The list could go on and many of us have painful memories of partnerships that didn’t quite work out.

And yet… partners are important for Mozilla. They’re even critical for Mozilla in the long run. They are the only way we will be able to scale our efforts and get relevance in the market. They are a source of ideas and opportunities we should tap into to continuously push ourselves and push our mission. They come with a ton of experience and industry knowledge that we can benefit from as we
foray into new areas. This makes for an interesting dilemma: how can we best capture the benefits partners bring for our users, whilst staying true to our core mission and values?…

Please join us next Thursday as we welcome April Underwood to discuss ways to build great products with partners. Throughout her career April has done just that, playing a variety of roles (engineering, marketing, business development, product) at a number of tech companies (Google, Twitter, Travelocity etc). And most recently she’s been building the Slack messaging platform that relies on tens of partners and that many of us love to use!

See below for every single detail you should know about the event and looking forward to seeing you all next week.

Bertrand


Details:
Day & Time: Thursday, February 25 @ Mozilla SF - 10:00am PT / 1:00pm ET / 6:00pm UTC + Air Mozilla
Location: Mozilla SF + Air Mozilla
Topic: Building Products with Partners: Interview with Slack’s April Underwood

Building products is complex. Building products with partners, considerably more so. Varying resources, goals, strategies and cultures pose challenges. But partnering well on products is often worth the effort. This month April Underwood, head of all product & partnerships at Slack, will draw from her experiences at Google, Twitter, Travelocity and more to help us navigate the complexities of marrying products and partnerships.

She’ll be interviewed by our very own Bertrand Neveux, who has built products with partners for most of his career at and leading up to Mozilla.

Speaker: April Underwood is VP of Product at Slack, a messaging platform that has evolved into a diverse ecosystem of partners.

Host: Bertrand Neveux
Questions: Submit during the event on IRC #AirMozilla.
Hashtags: #mozSS #brantina