Re: Corona Virus and volunteer events

Reps
#1

Hello Reps,

In light of the recent news about Coronavirus (COVID-19) and its spread across the world, the Reps Council has met and discussed how we can better help and protect our volunteers across the globe. Here are the main points of our discussion.

  • First and foremost, we are prompting all volunteers to follow local regulations and guidance. Right now we can’t make a global decision about canceling events or funding since the virus spread varies from country to country. We are though asking you to be conscious and always follow local rules.
  • We are going to fund only local meet-ups from now on. We are doing that in order to protect our volunteers and ensure that no risks are taken regarding your health and safety.
  • We are not going to fund large scale events (over 200 people).
  • If you want to cancel an event or postpone it because of the virus, that is absolutely ok. If you have already received resources for that event (swag, budget or both) you can keep those resources for now and use them for a future event. Just inform Francesca on the bug request.
  • We are encouraging you to have virtual events as well, you can find more resources on how to accommodate that here. If you need zoom rooms ids for longer meetings, please reach out to me and I will provide one (We understand that in some countries low bandwidth doesn’t permit virtual events if you have any other ideas on how to solve that, reach out to the Reps Council).

Thanks again for everything you are doing for the community and Mozilla. We are going to closely monitor the situation and adjust our decision as events evolve.

If you have any questions, do not hesitate to reach out to Reps Council or to me personally.

We will talk about this on tomorrow’s Reps call as well.

On behalf of the Reps Council and Mozilla’s Community Development team

Konstantina Papadea

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Partially reopening the Indian Swag Warehouse
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#2

hi

thanks
Yes, I will continue to organize the events remote (virtual events).

Christophe

#3

Thank you council for the position taken! And for thinking so deeply about communities! <3

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#4

Additionally to the measures above we do not want Reps to feel that they need to organize an event to stay in the Reps program. Therefore we’re suspending all inactivity checks until further notice. We’re still recommending to organize virtual events, but please focus on your health and the health of others. It’s okay to take time off.

Stay safe and follow local regulations.

Michael
on behalf of the Reps Peers and Reps Council

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#5

Just by curiosity what tools do you suggest ? Preferably FLOSS decentralized and resilient by design, I am investigating on lotechs ones.

#6

I’ve heard communities are using a mix of matrix and videoconferencing tools to keep things inclusive. @flaki and @Mte90 have already had some virtual events and I think they have some tips to share :slight_smile:

#7

I prefer Jitsi but find an instance with the support for the recording and maybe also the streaming to youtube (to keep a copy of the event/meeting) is not simple. For the usage of my lug we are waiting the one from our national association otherwise Zoom has the recording but the maximum time is 40 minutes with the free plan. I am waiting news from the Mozilla instance if it is possible, anyway there is also BigBlueButton that is an alternative open to Jitsi that has the recording too.

Anyway to organize one of those call like any meeting you need a schedule and people interested to the topic, we are doing a list of ideas inside the community but we are doing a recruitment campaign on Reddit that got new contributors that are helping us with our DeepSpeech model for Italian and the new website and maybe also new localizers for MDN.

People is at home with a lot of time, and we are providing a place to stay and also stuff to do. So as community members in the country involved I suggest doing a social campaign or something like this to get new people in the community because the ratio of likes/people joined is the highest I saw since the time of Firefox OS.

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#8

Thanks @couci ! Yeah I’ve wrote up some of my thoughts on our Rust Tallinn event that we did remotely, instead of physically. That post also mentions some of my recent thoughts on creating inclusive and engaging online events, this thought has been always on my mind but with recent conference postponements (including that of our very own RustFest) has given us even more chance to think about what makes a good online event – and online community in general.

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